


Iterative Processing

by Splintered_Star



Series: convergence [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Eventual Redemption, Gen, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Suicide, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Worldbuilding, body hopping, facism: it's terrible for everyone, repeated character death, space mccarthyism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2018-09-21 01:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9525611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splintered_Star/pseuds/Splintered_Star
Summary: (here’s a secret: you died, General. You wanted it to be the end, but it wasn’t.)Hux, surrounded by the ruins of the Order, decides to die rather than be captured. Then – he wakes up on Hosnian Prime, hours before its destruction by Starkiller. And that’s only the start of his troubles.(here’s another secret: this is a /lesson/, General. Are you /listening/?)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hollycomb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/gifts).



> Stylistic inspiration from @peradii, who may or may not be flattered by it; thematic inspiration by @hollyhark, to whom I owe a significant debt; betated by the incomparable @nenya85
> 
> chapter specific cw tags at the end of each chapter

Here’s the secret: the point of justice is to make sure that it never happens again.

What has been done cannot be undone. Killing a murderer does not restore the dead and torturing a torturer does not heal the scars. Stones dropped into a deep lake cannot be taken out again; vengeance does not turn back time.

And yet, we say: this is justice. We think it is fair, even, as if a balance has been righted, a debt repaid. We call this justice: the one who has caused suffering has been made to suffer.

So what is the purpose of punishment? Why do we bother? Is it an excuse for bloodlust? A warning to others? An attempt to heal the unhealable?

Well, yes, except-

 

 

T=-6 “Prologue”

The first time General Hux dies, it is in a maelstrom of blasterfire on some blasted-clean planet forsaken by the Force and the Republic.

Snoke is dead and Kylo Ren with him, Phasma long missing; the Order lies in ruins. You cannot build a pyre for an idea, but if you could, Hux would have built a grander one than this:  himself, alone, trapped under the cover of a half-ruined command center wall by blaster fire. The rest of High Command is dead or captured. No one has responded to Hux’s comm calls in hours.  There’s no one left, except for him and the Resistance.

He figures they have orders to take him alive. He glances down at the charge left on his blaster, and decides not to let them.

(The first time General Hux dies it is like this: it is the smell of charred flesh and ash, it is the taste of metal and ozone, the barrel of a primed blaster between his teeth. It is futile rage trapped in his throat; it is cursing the Resistance and the Jedi and Ren and the Scavenger Girl and -)

(The first time General Hux dies it is like this: without hesitation, because he’s never hesitated in firing a weapon in his life.)

(It is like this:  -click-  

-and then nothingness)

 

 

T=-5 “Bile and Blasterfire”

Hux wakes to sunlight and clean air and a woman staring down at him.

“Sir, are you all right?”

He pushes up from the ground – and promptly hunches over, vomiting up what feels like blaster fire but is in fact ordinary bile. He wipes his face with a hand that does not look like his – fingernails ragged, fingers too short, worn rough by manual labor.

His first thought, impossible, habitual: Ren, what did you do?

“Sir, if you need help…” He glares at the woman and her concerned expression. He must not be in Order Space, if this woman has wandered away from what she should be doing to waste time on a stranger.  

“Order Space”, hah. Whatever is left of it. Hux swallows down another mouthful of bile.

“Sir, you’re – this is the Ralkan district, on Hosnian Prime. Do you – do you know how you got here?”

His first thought: this is impossible.

His second, slightly hysterical: someone is apparently trying to make a point.

(Well, yes, except -)

General Hux stares at the woman he will one day eliminate and says, in a voice that does not sound like his own, “No, I do not.”

The woman tries to get his attention, even going so far as to put her hand on his arm when he stands– he pushes it off, and ignores her further attempts at conversation. Instead, he takes stock.

Immediate issues:

  1. He is not in his own body 
    1. The skin is too rough, the hair too dark and long, hanging over his face. The shapes are all wrong. There is something different about his eyesight but he cannot establish what.
    2. He appears to be full human, at least.
  2. He is apparently on Hosnian Prime, or at least he is being told so 
    1. Starkiller left nothing but ashes and radiation.
    2. Rebuttal: this woman isn’t acting like an agent. His arrival was not anticipated
    3. Either possibility requires validation.
  3. Regardless of the reason, he is in unfriendly territory with no resources



Potential explanations:

  1. He has been transferred through time and place 
    1. Unlikely, if not impossible. Ren claimed to be able to see through time upon occasion, but Ren claimed a lot of things.
  2. This is an elaborate construction by the Resistance for some reason 
    1. Possible, but highly unlikely. The Republic was wasteful, but what appeared to be an entire city just prove some obscure point?
  3. He was hallucinating before his death 
    1. Highly unlikely. Why would his mind produce /this/?
    2. Here’s a memory: Ren, arrogant and confident, building an illusion around them, trying to prove a point about how easily a mind could be fooled; all Hux had learned was the tells of an illusion pretending to be reality



Here’s a problem: none of these options are likely.

Here’s another: he died. He’s certain. He tasted ozone and plasma, felt the burn and then the emptiness, the wide gaping /nothing/ and then – here.

Hux shakes his head, snarling at the lankness and length of his hair, and walks away from the woman. His stride is all wrong and he nearly trips, unused to this - shape.

The woman doesn't try to follow him, at least. Everything is too bright, gravity all wrong, and his balance keeps shifting, but he gets far enough to lean against a tree without being stopped.

Stop. Evaluate the situation. He glances around like he’s surveying a battlefield.

His observations:

  1. No one is watching him, any more than reasonable for a disheveled man stumbling along the street. Those that give him notice look at him with concern and confusion than alarm or suspicion. No one is looking at him like a target.
  2. Demographics of those around him: both human and non, though humans seem to have slim majority. Largely adults, though sometimes in the company of young. No visible gender disparity. Economic markers seems appropriate for the Capital of the Republic – much more affluent than any Outer Rim planet, and much showier than any Order Planet.
  3. He is in a city, or an impressive facsimile of one. There are no visible boundaries to indicate the edge of the active containment zone or holo-chamber, but they may be subtle. There are ways to tell, but not without getting closer. In the distance, he sees what appears to be the Senate building, gleaming transparisteel and metal.
  4. There are no visible guards, no security check points. Hux looks around again, but sees little evidence of security cameras or observation droids.



Here’s a fact: Observation 4 is the most unsettling.  If this were a ruse, they would want eyes on him at all times.

He steps away from the tree, narrowing his eyes when his actions garner no extra attention. He walks slowly, mindful of being several inches shorter now and of planetside gravity. Shops line the street, displaying expensive holo readers and luxuries. Hux sneers at them as he passes, and then, in the reflection of polished chrome signage, he pauses.

Here’s a fact: There is no technology that Hux knows of – and he knows many – that allows for the transfer of consciousness and memories from one body to another. Droids may have their minds transplanted an infinite number of times, but no technology exists for biologics. Cloning only copies the body, not the mind, and any attempts at the transplant of a mind causes irrevocable damage.

Here’s another fact, equally unavoidable: it is not his face in the reflection of the shop sign. It is not just the hair, or the skin tone – it is the structure, the sharp angles of his face gone soft and out of place, and his eyes, always ice green and sharp, are suddenly brown and warm.

Here’s an explanation, half frantic, in the back of his mind: there are ways to change appearances, even this drastically, even changing his height and his eye color and his face -

(Here’s a rebuttal: but /why/, General? Who would spare the expense, the time? Your nearly-dead allies? The wreckage of the Republic? What would the point be?)

Hux blinks eyes that are not his, and glances around until he finds a public data station, set up for visitors to the capital. He does not, initially, look at any of the tourist information splashed across the screen – instead, his attention stays on the line of text tucked in the corner: the local date and time.

If it is accurate, then in less than seven hours Starkiller will fire and destroy this planet.

His first impulse: hysterical laughter.

His first thought: Someone /is/ trying to make a point, aren’t they?

His second thought: But who? The Republic wouldn’t bother. No one else would have the resources.

(You know what’s happening, General. You’ve never backed away from the facts before, have you?)

Hux flips through the information stored on the data station. Nearest spaceport – hours away on foot. He rifles through the pockets of his clothing – no credit chips, nothing to indicate an identity, nothing with which to barter or defend himself.

Options:

  1. Try to find a way off planet 
    1. Requirements: Vessel with hyperspace capability 
      1. Sub requirements: identification suitable for intergalactic travel, credits necessary for travel on short notice, verification to reach atmo without being stopped
    2. Feasibility: Practically impossible.
  2. Contact the Order to give them a warning of what would come 
    1. Requirements: secure intergalactic comm connection, access to First Order comm lines, the comm address of someone who would listen to his warning and be able enact it
    2. Resources: Access codes to the High Command of the Order, stored within his memory; a reasonable skill with computers; a knowledge of who would be most useful to send a warning to.
    3. Feasibility: difficult, close to impossible. Anyone sending a warning using Hux’s access codes from Republic Space would be treated as a spy at best, and disregarded in any case. Success would depend on luck and questionable security protocols.



Here’s the conclusion: he’s stuck, powerless and unable to change anything.

Here’s the galling part: he could change events to come, if only he had more /time/. 24 hours, or even 12.

Here’s a fact: the First Order believes in structure, in organization. People accept the roles that have been set for them, living within the confines of a situation built for them.

Here’s another fact: Hux believes this is the best way. Of course he does.

(Here’s a secret, General: you don’t though, not really. You have always been the one snarling a challenge at the galaxy, daring it to face you – you are the usurper of fate, the tamer of stars, not the confined but the confiner. For everyone who lives by the rules there must be someone who writes them.)

(The rules are always different for you, aren’t they?)

(Here’s another secret, though: don’t feel bad, General – this is the nature of every mortal, an inherent hypocrisy in the conscious mind. Everyone does it sometimes, even the ones who try very hard not to. In this at least, you’re not worse than anyone else.)

(But you’re not any better, either, and how you must _hate_ it.)

(Here’s the truth, General:  this is a lesson. Will you learn it?)

Hux snarls, pushes too-long hair out of his eyes, and starts walking towards the space port.  It’s better than doing nothing.

 

 

Hux thumps against the wall of the alleyway, hours later, cold and hungry and furious. He is certain, now, that this experience is real (here’s a secret: he always trusts his own instincts most of all) that he has somehow been thrown through time and space, but he has no idea /why/ and that is a snarling knot of frustration underneath the chill and hunger and indignity of it all.

Not only is he in the past on a doomed Republic planet, cold and hungry and /dirty/, but whatever damned force - or Force - responsible for it couldn’t even be bothered to explain.

Here’s a secret: Hux almost wishes Ren had survived Snoke’s death and was here, just so that Hux could shout at him.

“Sir, are you all right?” Hux jerks back, glaring at the woman who spoke, tempted to ignore her like he had ignored others earlier. He thinks about it: refusing the implied offer of help or any admission of weakness, and instead waiting for Starkiller with his dignity.  He never gave into mortal weaknesses when he was a cadet, damned if he’s going to now.

Here’s a rebuttal: he is tired and sweaty and hungry, and he has no idea how much colder it will get now that the sun has set. He can swallow his pride for a few hours – he’s learned how, over the years - and there’s no dignity in freezing to death in an alley.

He meets the woman’s eyes for a long moment, but doesn’t speak. Asking for help is worse, somehow, than putting his blaster down his throat. That was refusing to be taken alive – this feels like the surrender that that wasn’t.

(Here’s a secret: he has learned how to swallow his pride since he was a teenager, but every time it goes down like bile and blasterfire.)

The woman catches his expression and one side of her mouth quirks. She’s a blue twi’lek, her lekku bound up with colorful leathers and beads. “Here’s an easier question. Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?” Hux smiles thinly and shakes his head. “Would you like a shower and a hot meal?”

“I would,” he says as neutrally as he can manage with a parched throat coated only with swallowed pride. “I don’t have much to offer in return, I’m afraid.”

He has any number of ideas about what she might demand of him in return – sexual favors, maybe, she /is/ a twi’lek after all; maybe she’d try to sell him into slavery, but even that would be a way /off/ this damned planet; maybe she’d just try to murder him, but even in this strange and unfamiliar body he’s certain he can best her.

Here’s a fact: on an Order world, he would have to do no such calculations; any vagrancy would be prevented before it occurred by government intervention and full employment. If a vagrant was found, having fallen into that state through carelessness or a refusal to participate in the system, they would be taken in for evaluation and reeducation. Every effort would be expended in returning them to functionality and usefulness. There are no kidnappers out to exploit the homeless because there were no homeless to exploit.

(Here’s a secret, except not really: there are always people unwilling to be useful, no matter the effort expended on them. Those people are purged.)

To his surprise, the twi’lek woman laughs, small bells attached to her lekku jingling.

“No payment, but if you wanna help with the cooking I won’t turn you down.” She laughs again when he frowns. There must be a cost, and he hates not knowing what it is, but he has few options. He will be wary. (Here’s a fact: he’s usually wary.) “My name is Kaja; I run the free clinic down in the square?” She ways this like she expects him to recognize it, so he nods. “Yours?”

“…Elan.” His middle name is unrecognizable enough.

“Well Elan,” the woman says, one lekku swinging over her shoulder with a jangle of bells, “Follow me and we’ll get something warm in you, alright? It’s not far.” She starts walking, and for lack of better options, he follows her.

The woman chatters as she walks, a friendly counterpoint to the jingling of her lekku. Hux splits his attention, half watching the path they take and half listening to her talk about local shelters and government assistance.

Here’s a surprise: she doesn’t ask any questions.

Here’s another surprise: the place she leads him to is not a government building or an abandoned warehouse, but a house in the local style. On an Order controlled world it would contain a half a battalion, at least, but in the decadent Republic it probably houses a single family… or possibly a pet.  There are cool blues and flowers and a /lawn/, because in the capital of the Republic they wastes space and water on /grass/.

Laying on the grass, a human woman looks up from her datareader. Sharp brown eyes snap to Kaja, and then to Hux, and then she thunks her head down with an audible groan.

“Kaj, we /talked/ about this….”

Kaja smiles, all innocent, and waves at the woman.

“Naira, darling! This is Elan, he’s going to be borrowing our washing machine and shower for a bit. There’s enough for an extra serving of dinner, right?” The woman rubs the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger. Kaja half turns. “Elan, this is Naira, my wife. She’s harmless.”

“Unless you hurt my wife,” Naira drawls, glaring, “In which case I’ll stab you with a stylus.”

“Naira!” Kaja chides, though she’s still smiling. Hux wants to sneer at how /domestic/ it is, the affection and familiarity. They’re doomed, with less than a half-cycle to live, and they’re oblivious to it. It’s sickening, how connected they clearly are. (That’s not what it is, General.)  


 

 

Here’s a fact: Hux has not used a water-based shower in 17 years, since his first shipboard assignment. Though he was allocated enough water for one on the Finalizer, he never used it – he finds the idea distastefully inefficient. Indulgent.

Here’s another fact: Hux does not indulge himself. He will, occasionally, reward himself with a cigarra, or dedicate an evening to drink if necessary, but such things are self-maintenance. He is not Ren, flying on impulse and demanding all manner of comforts; and he is not the Republic, wasting effort and resources on meaningless softness instead of efficient /work/.

Hux stands in the bathroom and glares up at the showerhead. He resents everything about this inexplicable and uncomfortable situation, but somehow being forced to participate in this /wastefulness/ is the most galling. Again, he considers spending the night on the street, unfed and unwashed, and watching the death of the planet alone.

He shakes his head, discarding the idea once more. Using a water shower is distasteful, but he’s done distasteful things before.

Here’s an angle: this is the heart of the Republic, and this is access he would have never had as General of the Order. He is in the private home of Republican citizens, being treated as an ally or at least not an enemy.

Here’s a plan, then: treat it as an information gathering mission, as insight into the Republic at its height. In less than 5 hours the planet will be destroyed, and him with it, so take advantage while he can.

Here’s a principle: All information is useful information, given the right context. He might not know the context of this experience yet, but that’s no excuse.

Here’s a secret: Hux has no particular emotion about his own death, past perhaps a vague sense of annoyance. He would prefer to survive, of course, but having established that as impossible, he will get what use out of it he can.

(Here’s another secret: even though it takes him a few minutes to remember how to operate the shower, when Hux steps into the spray of water, it feels so good that if he were a religious man, he would call it sinful.)

 

 

 

 

Hux emerges in his borrowed clothing, damp and resentful, and – pauses.

“Mew?” The cat perched on the bed tilts its head at him, and then stretches across a pillow. It’s cream colored, with grey points, and seems supremely unconcerned with the strange human in its territory, even when Hux inches closer. It’s missing a front leg, he realizes, though there’s an interface for an artificial one.

Here’s a fact: General Hux bears no softness and little concern for living creatures beyond their utility to the Order.

Here’s a secret, however: Hux is fond of cats.

Here’s a memory, long buried: Armitage Hux, hardly old enough to recognize the weight of his own name, coaxing his mother’s aging cat towards him. It was standoffish and proud, full of fluff and arrogance. Mother snuck it scraps of dinner when she thought she could get away with it. Father only tolerated it while it was still a decent mouser.

The cat had eventually tolerated his touch, licking its paws as he’d stroked its back, marveled at the soft fur and sharp claws. It was the deadly grace that appealed to him, then, even more than the softness – it was the confidence, the danger, the prickle of claws. It was the first thing, he thinks now, that felt like it was his – as if in coaxing the beast to allow him to pets its ears and brush its fur, he had stolen a chunk of it from his mother, staked a claim on its loyalty.

(That’s not what happened, General, and you know it. It was not the cat’s loyalty that had been claimed.)

(You fed that cat scraps long after your father tried to get rid of it for being useless. And when he’d caught you at it, he made you throw it outside. A lesson, he’d called it, about coddling uselessness.)

(It sat meowing under your window for days. You could have opened the window, but you didn’t. Do you /remember/, General? And then you found out that one of the local families had started taking care of it, one of the families from before the Order came there, and all you felt was relief and guilt for your relief – father had said that death would be better than uselessness, and you believed him, of course you did, /except/ -)

(-except, and here’s a secret: you were always very careful with cats, after that. You made sure that they were not unduly harmed on your ships, allowed them a dignified retirement in their old age when they could no longer hunt. It raised morale, you said, to let the officers have a pet. And it did, but that wasn’t why you did it.)

The cat rubs its head against Hux’s fingers, purring as he scratches its ears. He’d known, of course, that the destruction of the Hosnian system would result in the destruction of the ecosystems and animals on them, even though they were only peripheral of the crimes of the Republic.

Here’s the thing: Starkiller was never meant to be precise.

And here’s the truth of it: the power of Starkiller was not in its efficiency or its destructive capabilities – the power of Starkiller was in its /symbolism/: of the Empire reborn and resplendent, with its greatest weapon made even greater; of the complete destruction of not just the Republic Senate, but of its planet, and all planets associated; of taming not just sentient life but claiming the strength of the very stars; of doing in a single attack what a hundred years of war would not do. It was not just about the destruction of the Senate – it was about /sending a message/.

The cat puts its front paw around his wrist, mewing plaintively, and he rubs its paw with his thumb. It pushes its head into his hand to encourage a more thorough stroking.

Symbolic gestures such as this always come with a cost. The resources that would no longer be available, and the area of space that would be rendered unusable due to debris and radiation – and, of course, the deaths of those not directly involved in the running of the Republic. A necessary sacrifice for the new Order.

Hux gives in to the insistent mewing and lifts the cat into the crook of his elbow, scratching at its stomach absently. This friendly creature will die too, he thinks, for the sins of its owners. Unfortunate, but unavoidable.

 

 

“Well,” Kaja says with a smirk when he emerges from the guest room with a cat in his arms, “Guess it’s too late to ask if you’re allergic to cats.” Hux inclines his head, and kneels to set the cat on the floor. “I took her leg off for 30 seconds to polish it, and she runs off. Didn’t you, you little furry brat,” Kaja says, kneeling to pick up the cat and tap it gently on the nose with a prosthetic leg, “You just had to find out if the new guest was vulnerable to cuteness, didn’t you?”

The cat mews, bats once at the prosthetic, and then abandons it in favor of batting at the jingling bells hanging from Kaja’s lekku. Kaja laughs, and wiggles her lekku obligingly.

“You know that’s why she jumps on your head when you leave them on in bed, right?” Naira shouts from another room – the kitchen, presumably. The human woman comes out, her long pink hair bound up in a bun, and leans against the entryway. “And then you complain that she wakes you up.” Kaja twists just enough to stick her tongue out at her wife, which was of course ignored. Naira instead glances at Hux, her expression shuttering instantly. “Come on and help cook, you.”

 

 

 

“All right, here’s the deal.” Naira says, not looking up from the pot she stirred absently with one hand. Hux had been set on chopping vegetables, and faced them with the same grudging resentfulness as he had the water shower.

Here’s a fact: Hux, like many Order members of his generation, had lived most of his life under either Republic Sanctions or shipboard rationing. Fresh vegetables were a luxury in his childhood and an impossibility afterwards. He occasionally had them while on mandated planetside leave, or at diplomatic events, but he never sought them out. Rations were sufficient.

Naira pulls the spoon out of the pot and gestures with it. “After dinner, we’ll see you off to one of the hostels, they always give Kaja a discount for these things.” Another vague gesture with the spoon. “If you manage to stay out of trouble for, say, a week, I’ll get on the paperwork for citizenship and get you set up with job placement, all right?” Hux swallows another mouthful of blasterfire pride and says nothing. “And if you /don’t/ stay out of trouble,” and here Naira looks at him, her smile a razor thin line, “I’ll deport you myself. Clear?”

In hours, this planet would be destroyed with everyone and all their plans on it.

Hux inclines his head, and goes back to chopping vegetables.

 

 

Hux sits at a Republican dinner table, eating some sort of stir fry filled with vegetables he would have never afforded as a child, a cat padding around the table legs on cushioned paws. He says little, and watches the clock.

"Now, of course, I'm working on training someone to take over the clinic," Kaja chatters between bites. Her lekku gesture instead of her hands, jingling slightly with each move. "Just in case something happens, or if I wanna do a trip around the Rim."

Hux pauses in his meal, just half a second. He tilts his head at her. He has not spoken, but Kaja looks over to him regardless.

"You're Rim-born, right?" Hux raises his eyebrows. "You've got a bit of the accent, every now and then." His lips twist down.

Here's a fact: many officers in the Order do in fact have a Rim-accent, or more accurately, a blended accent of their parent's Imperial with the local speech patterns where they settled. The Imperial accent was encouraged, of course.

Here's a secret:  Hux spent hours practicing with old holo tapes of Imperial officers to make sure that his consonants were sharp and his diction clear.

Here's another secret: he's never been able to throw the Rim accent entirely, though. It only comes out when he's drunk or exhausted, and he makes a practice to be neither where people can see him.

“When I was young,” He finally says into the silence. “I haven’t been back in some time.”

"Oh, okay, I see." Kaja says, gesturing with her lekku again. She puts down her fork so that she can gesture with her hands as well. "Well, okay. The Outer Rim regions are just…. You know how they are. No infrastructure, no hyperspace routes, maybe a dozen teaching hospitals in the entire region…”

"It's also /dangerous/," Naira says, with the tone of a long repeated argument. "Because there are pirates and slavers and the First Order goons, and that's why we will not be going there."

Hux is almost offended by "goons", but decides to ignore that in favor of listening.

"People still need medical care even in the Outer Rim," Kaja replies in the same tone. "And the Republic isn't helping them. If there were enough infrastructure to support a society and an economy, then the Order wouldn't have any supporters." Naira crosses her arms, eyebrows up. The cat rubs around Hux's feet, begging for scraps. "I'm not saying the Order is a good thing, you know that. What I'm /saying/ is that the people in the Rim have legitimate needs for medicine and power, and the Order supplies them. Supply those needs, and then the Order won’t have a support base, and the area will be safer.”

"I know, I know. Which is why what we should do is get the government involved, and expand the infrastructure to the regions that need them, not put private citizens at risk."

Kaja huffs a breath. "If that worked, it would have been done already. You shout at politicians enough, and if you can't convince them, no one can." She winks. "And I just. People need help and they're not getting it under the Order, not at a fair price, and you know I can't stand that."

Naira quirks a smile. "And you know I can't stand the thought of you getting hurt, darling."  Her smile fades as she glances to the side, seemingly remembering some remnant of manners. "And here we go talking politics in front of a guest, even."

"No, this is fascinating." Hux says, his head propped in one hand. He's given up on food, as hungry as he was. It doesn't seem to be worth it to force past the nausea and burns in his throat, considering how little time is left.

Here's a surprise: he is not lying. This is not a view of the Republic he is used to.

(You wanted to know about the Republic, General. Well, listen up.)

"It’s been some time since I’ve been on the Rim," He says, intentionally vague. "but I have seen many of the problems you mention. Poverty, overpopulation, crime, collapsing economies, lack of medical care or support systems. It is... systemic."

Here's a surprise, at least to some: Hux does in fact know about all the problems of the Rim regions. He was informed of every market collapse, every disaster, every epidemic. If he intends to rule, and he did, he wanted to know every detail of the state of his subjects. The death of the Empire had abandoned these people, but the remnants of the Empire would not abandon them again.

“Many people,” He continues, “feel that the Republic has abandoned them and only cares about the Core worlds.” Hux looks down and pushes something green around on his place. "I’m surprised to hear that there is a push to get involved there."

Here is the propaganda line:  The Republic has abandoned you. The Republic has no interests in the suffering of the people in the Outer Rim. The Republic is self absorbed, selfish, only interested in hoarding its wealth and comforts, unconcerned for the fates of any outside of the Core.

Here's the truth: Hux believes the propaganda. Of course he does. There are things the masses must be told to placate them, but this is not in its number. This is the state of the galaxy.

“Well, we’re just getting started, really.” Kaja gestures with her lekku again. On the floor, the cat chases the sound of jingling bells up and looks to be considering a jump. "The idea right now is to provide humanitarian aid and medical training on Rim Planets, and if we can swing it some economic support, so that they'll be less vulnerable to people who demand they give up their sentient rights in order to survive. We're working on permits and things, and while I know a pretty great lawyer," Here Kaja pauses to wink at her wife, who just smirks in return, "It's still a pretty complex problem."

"If you get your citizenship sorted out," Naira cuts in, getting Hux's attention with a lazy gesture with a fork, "You can get involved, if you want. Pay wouldn't be much, but it would be paid. We could use a few more Rim born people involved, frankly."

"Oh, that would be great!" Kaja smiles at him, her lekku jingling. "/And/ you'd get to see Sophie more often, and she already likes you. Even if she's trying to get scraps right now, the spoiled little furball." Sophie - oh, the cat. "Yes, I see you down there, brat." The cat only mews in response.

In two hours, all of their plans and ideals will be destroyed. There were no plans to assist the Outer Rim, after Starkiller. There were no humanitarian missions. The galactic economy collapsed, which had been expected and planned for - but the Order was not able to step into the gap, unable to give the support that had been intended when all of its credits and effort had to be expended after the destruction of Starkiller. There was only survival and revenge, for the Republic.

(Did that really surprise you, General? Is that the result you wanted, General?)

"...We'll see," Hux says, and then says nothing more for the remainder of dinner.  The cat on the floor rubs against his legs and purrs, begging for scraps like the spoiled Republic beast it is.

 

 

 

 

"Sorry about the wait, the hostels are all pretty busy right now," Kaja says, afterwards, sitting next to him on the couch in the front room. Naira is off in what is apparently her office, but Kaja insisted on staying with Hux. "But we should have a ride for you soon. It might be a bit of a drive from here though. I can give you my comm number if you need it."

"That won't be necessary," Hux says, glancing at the time, and then out the bay windows. Soon, he thinks. He could turn on the news – his speech should be broadcasting now – but he doesn’t. He stands, and walks to the window.  There isn’t much view of the sky, but there’s enough. A faint desire for privacy makes him say, over his shoulder, “You can stay with your wife. I’ll be fine.”

(Is that really why you said it, General? For /privacy/?)

Kaja clicks her tongue at him, but stands, her cat purring at her feet. “Allright, but let me know when you leave, okay?”

Hux just smirks, inclines his head, and says nothing as he goes back to watching the sky alone, calculating travel time and wormhole lag in the back of his mind.

The second time General Hux dies, he is alone in an enemy land, in borrowed clothes and borrowed space. Swallowed pride still scrapes in his throat, bile and blasterfire at not being able to influence the course of history, but he’s soothed as much as he can be at the knowledge that he is, at least, dying in the firing of his glorious weapon and will not live to see its destruction again.

He would rather not die with the Republic still standing, of course, but given the options available, dying in Starkiller’s light is preferable. There’s a sort of elegance to it, he decides, being killed by something he himself made. Tolerable, if not ideal.

(The second time that General Hux dies, it is like this: a beam of red light in the sky, dark outlines left on the carpet behind him and his eyes burning from radiation. And then - a _crack_ as the beam breaks through the planet’s crust and the planet’s core starts to explode.)  

(The second times he dies it is almost, but not completely painless, and some part of him is disappointed by that.)

(The second time is, at least, quick.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: suicide, on screen death of main character, off screen death of everyone, genocide, historical mistreatment of a cat
> 
> alternative chapter title: hux learns nothing and everything is sad


	2. Chapter 2

 

T=-4 “Standard Operating Procedure”

Hux comes to with a jolt, his skin burning with left-over radiation, his eyesight sparking with afterimages across his vision. He crumples to the ground, heaving, until the pain passes. For one blinding moment he’s certain he’s still dying, the instant of burning alive in Starkiller’s flash extended infinitely, eternity trapped in that bright red flame –

-and then he registers: stone underneath his palms, sulfur-tainted air in his lungs. Blood, breath, movement. He is alive, again, after dying, again.

(Did you really think it was over, General?)

Hux pushes up from the ground, leans against the wall of the dingy alleyway, and swears under his breath. Then he pushes black hair out of his eyes and walks forward, stumbling a bit as he gets used to his new form and trying to figure out when and where he’s been thrown now.

Observations:

  1. The sky is clouded. Clouds are slightly orange tinted but otherwise calm. Light appears to be in the standard visual range for humans.
  2. Buildings are sensibly organized and conservatively decorated. There is none of the wasteful exuberance of the Alliance here: instead, there are sharp lines and economical lengths in place of tall towers and shining chrome.
  3. The demographics are familiar: humans in Order uniform, with the occasional near human species outside of uniform.



Initial Conclusion: he is in Order space, in a well-controlled sector.

Continued Observations:

  1. The air smells of industry, sulfur and metal processing. Nearby buildings show signs of acid rain damage.
  2. Frigates and heavy transport ships pass over head, blinking out of sight as they shift into hyperspace.
  3. There is something familiar in the skyline, something known seen from a new angle.



Final conclusion: he knows this planet. Epsilon Eridani – an early conquest of the Order in the Outer Rim.

Something in the back of his mind relaxes, very slightly. He knows this place; he understands things here. Here, there are avenues to take – he will be able to /act/ in ways that he was unable to in the Republic Capital.

Here’s another thought, slightly sardonic: and this time, he isn’t on a doomed planet.

So here’s the plan: find the closest Order office and determine what legal identity is attached to this body. At that point, he will have a better idea of what his resources are, and be able to interact with the appropriate channels to send any necessary warnings.

(You really think that will work, General? You think this is your territory, don’t you? Oh, General.)

 

 

The officers at the outpost do not salute him when he enters. He knows, obviously, that they have no reason to. He is not currently General Hux in any form that they recognize.  Still, he approaches them as he always has – head up, shoulders back, steps sure and even – not like a general, perhaps, but at least like an equal.

(First mistake, General.)

He steps to the area for accessing civilian accounts. A nearby holoscreen shows the date: six weeks before the destruction of Starkiller. Not a lot of time, but enough. It’s possible that the body he’s found himself in is an officer, but the hands are too rough for it. He nods to the officer, and opens his mouth expectantly.

Here's a fact: General Hux has had DNA samples taken from him innumerable times over his career. It is a standard security measure in the Order, required for each security level and before accessing particularly sensitive information, and one he is used to.

Here's a surprise: In all his years, the collection has never been as rough as this. The officer is not gentle when he takes the swab for DNA testing, gripping his jaw to force his mouth open and jabbing the inside of his cheek with a pipette.  He does not draw blood, but the inside of his check throbs with pain for minutes afterwards.

He glowers at him, but it is not technically a breach of procedure, and the officer gives no indication of noticing. The DNA scan runs, comparing the sample to all samples on file - out of the corner of his eye, he sees the computer run through what he recognizes as the local population, and then the officers, and then known visitors.

The result: no information known.

The Officer snorts at the result. Hux stares at the screen, not sure what this would mean - if this body existed before he occupied it, then there would be records, there would be an identity attached to it -

"Well, looks like you've got yourself a problem, eh?" The officer says, snapping Hux's attention back to him. "Now, getting /that/ kind of a result means one thing..." And the Officer grins, wide and nasty. Hux has the sharp realization of what he means. "Now, are you going to go down and talk to the security offices of your own free will, or do you need someone to make sure you don't get lost on the way?"

Here's a realization: they think he's been blacklisted. Deemed as a security risk to the Order, and thus potentially erased from the standard level of databases. 

Here’s another realization: he cannot prove differently. In a standard situation, that is exactly what that result would indicate.

The blacklist - or as it was officially known, the List of Known and Suspected Alliance Sympathizers – was a vital part of the Order's regulation of its population.  It prevented Alliance sympathizers from infiltrating the Order and weakening it. Anyone who was listed was prevented from accessing government services, from applying for work, or moving off planet. What they /could/ do was turn themselves into the Order and allow themselves to be processed or cleared.

(And how often were people cleared, General? How many people walked out of those offices and returned to their normal lives free of suspicion? How many people walked out of those offices at all? You may not know the exact numbers, but you don’t need to. Everyone knows what happens to people who turn themselves in, even if they were innocent.)

The blacklist did not contain /errors/.

(I thought you weren’t a religious man, General.)

Here’s a fact: the only real way for someone to be taken off the blacklist would be to confess to their crimes and assist the Order with investigations fully.

Here’s the problem: Hux has no information to offer, no Alliance allies to betray and no confessions to make.

Here’s his fate, then: with the only truth he could offer unacceptable and unbelievable, he will disappear into the security offices and never emerge, this third life even shorter than the second –

(But the system works, doesn’t it General? You would punish any officer who didn’t act according to procedure.)

Belated calculations start ticking in the back of his mind, angles of attack and potential solutions he hadn’t spent time analyzing yet, because he’d expected to be /safe/ here –

Hux opens his mouth –

The door behind him clicks open. The Officer’s eyes shift over, and his expression shifts with them. Hux nearly turns, but instead stays focused on the officer.

“Am I interruptin’ something, then?”

The officer shrugs, smiling. “Not at all, Kai, we were just finishing. This gentleman was just on his way to the security offices to sort out an error in his file.”

A half indrawn breath behind him. So this Kai understands the meaning of the phrase.

“Well, I can walk him over, if y’all are busy.” Hux tenses, the situation unknown, and the officer’s smile flickers. “Oh, but I was gonna ask – that reception array I installed the other week – how’s that working out for ya?”

The officer smiles once more. There is a subtext in this exchange that Hux dislikes. “Works like a charm. You are welcome to assist this gentleman, if you would be so kind.”

A hand at his elbow, tugging back. Hux wants to resist, set his feet, but he’s in a vulnerable situation and has less allies than he thought. As galling as it is, the best solution right now is to retreat. He does not trust this Kai, but it will be easier to slip anyone’s grasp when not in a building.

Here’s a realization, sharp and angry in his throat: he assumed he understood the situation, that familiarity bred control. He assumed that the body he had been dumped in had the decency to legally exist, and that interacting with the systems he knew wouldn’t immediately put him in danger.

Here’s a fact: he’s mostly angry at himself. He /assumed/. He should have known better.

(Here’s what you assumed: because you are in Order space, you know what things were like. You assumed that you understood the situation – you assumed that you were safe here because General Hux had always been safe here.)

(You’re still you, but /they/ don’t know that, do they?) 

So he grits his teeth, curses whatever Force has set this up – part of him still wants to blame Ren, just for the sheer inconvenience – and lets this Kai pull him out into the street.

 

 

“So, I’m Kai, as you may’ve gathered,” the young – person? Human, at least – says as they guide Hux along the organized roads of the city. People glance at them as they pace, but rarely linger. “But who’re you?”

Observations:

  1. Kai is young, though obviously an exact age would be impossible to determine. Could be anywhere from teens to mid-twenties. Long blonde hair tied back with a bandana of indeterminate color, pale skin, green eyes.
  2. They walk with a limp, their right leg stiff and landing too heavily on the ground. Possibly cybernetic, but if so, a roughly built one. Possibly an injury, though such injuries are more common among old soldiers.
  3. Their clothes are rough and old, clearly patched in several places, and smeared with what Hux hopes is grease. Their gloves, however, are sturdy and well cared for.
  4. They are waiting for a response.



“… Elan.” No point in changing it now.

“Just Elan?” Kai smirks, but doesn’t press. “Well, if you’ll just follow me…”

Here’s a fact: Hux remembers the layout of this city perfectly well, walking the main paths often enough to commit them to memory.  

Here’s another fact: The largest factory on this side of the planet looms nearby, distinctive and unmistakable.

Here’s a conclusion: They are not heading towards the security offices.

Kai catches his look and smirks again. “Officers just want ‘cha to disappear, doesn’t matter how.” They tilt their head, indicating an alley way. “If you’re determined to turn yourself in, I’ll hardly stop you, but, there /is/ another option. Wanna try the one that doesn’t end with you dead in a gutter somewhere?”

Hux’s face and voice are perfectly even. The ridiculousness of the proposal should speak for itself.  “So I should follow a stranger into an alleyway instead, on the understanding that it /won’t/ end with me dead in a gutter?”

Here’s a surprise: Kai laughs, sharp and sudden.  “No, I’m sayin’ you should follow me down into a /tunnel/.” They wink, laughing again at Hux’s expression. “No promises on the dying, but I can promise that I won’t be the one doin’ it.”

Potential paths:

  1. Refuse. Potential problems: Kai might try to force him. He has no resources and little access to getting at them – even taking himself off of the blacklist would require physical access to servers he is unlikely to get.
  2. Follow. Potential problems: He has no idea what to expect from here, and may be walking into a trap. Kai clearly acquired him for an unknown reason.



Conclusion: …damn it.

“…Very well. If you will?” Kai grins, walks down the alley way, and lifts up a metal plate. With a wave, they disappear down the tunnel. Hux snarls, and follows them down.

 

 

 

"See, the tunnels actually stretch pretty far under the city," Kai explains, leading Hux on a wandering path through tunnels lit by faint green lights along the edges. Hux has lost all sense of direction, and hates it, and hates it even more that he suspects it was intentional. "Some of 'em are still on offical maps, but a lot of them ain't." Kai taps out patterns on the wall as they walk, rattling the bars of half-destroyed ladders as they pass.  "I can't promise ya anything more than a room to yourself and a sonic, 'course, but it ain't a bad deal, I think."

Hux narrows his eyes. "In exchange for what?" Kai has the manner of someone making a familiar deal, and it sets him on edge.

Kai grins again, quick and sharp. "Depends on what you can give me, of course, but it's better than the Officers or the streets, eh?"

Here's a fact: giving aid to people outside of the official channels is a suspicious act, and helping someone avoid the consequences of the blacklist would put someone on the list themselves. No chance of anywhere else to stay in the meantime, and that matters now.

(You're cut off from the Order, and cut off from /everything/.)

Here's a realization, belated: he's died twice since he last slept.  

Hux nods, sharp and stiff.  He hates everything about this situation, but has few options. He'll bargain with what he can.

Kai stops at a door and pushes it open for Hux. “Here ya go. We’ll talk details after you get some sleep, eh? You look dead on ya feet.” Hux glares at them but enters – there’s a place to sleep, a sonic, and what looks like a box of rations. Hux won’t try any of them until he’s sure of the safety. There’s a digital lock on the door. He’ll scramble it at the first opportunity. “Oh, and don’t worry about the officers. We’ve got an arrangement.” And with that tacit admission of corruption, Kai winks again and disappears down the corridor, obvious to Hux’s fury.

(Here’s the problem, General: no one can live here without it. No one is capable of giving what the Order demands of them – no one is able to dedicate every thought and breath and heartbeat to the Order. You set up guardrails to keep people on the straight and narrow path of productivity and usefulness - but the margins are too tight, the walls too close, and no one can breathe. You can’t make people give up what you ask them to and have them still be /people/ when you’re done.

You’ve always been so much better with machines than people.

Here’s the solution, then: corruption. Exceptions. Places where the rules bend around people so that the people won’t break. You have them too General, don’t pretend that you don’t. Your expensive imported cigarras, your bottle of Correlian rum – all those little indulgences that you called self-maintenance.

You knew you needed them, just as you knew you weren’t supposed to need them – so you worked twice as hard to deserve them, to chase away the feeling of /weakness/ and insufficiency -

Don’t feel too bad, General: little hypocrisies like that are unavoidable. You’re still a person, almost, no matter how much you wish you weren’t. You still have wants and needs; an existence beyond the needs of the Order. And if you couldn’t bear it, then who could?)

(Here’s a secret: that’s why you hated Ren so much – because he made you want and you couldn’t /stand/ it.)

 

Initial Observations after two days:

  1. The room he was given was clean, and he was able to sleep without being harmed in immediately noticeable way. The lock had not been changed when he woke up. The rations were ship standard and did not taste unusual. 



 

  1. The area of the tunnels that Kai claims extends underneath the factory and half a mile outside of it. While they largely form a self-contained loop, Hux suspects there are connection points to other tunnel systems.



 

  1. There are indications of trade between tunnel systems, something in the rough shapes of a market. Hux watches from a bench, completely ignored as people - humans and otherwise - enter the hub of the tunnels where Kai has set up shop and barter.



 

  1. Kai deals partially in scrap metal, it seems, and somewhat in tinkering with mechanics, but primarily in access to contraband media. A holoprojector displays an Alliance newsfeed on the wall behind them, or at least until Kai switches it to a Romance drama set in the rebellion, and then an Alliance educational channel meant for small children. The signal is fuzzy and cuts out, but the fact that it's getting through at all is alarming. Several trades are based on datadisks of contraband media.



 

  1. Kai trades with whoever comes in, humans or non, mammalian or reptilian, known smugglers or simply the dregs of society. Hux watches them make a trade with near-human woman, the exact nature of which is impossible to tell but is communicated innuendo and code, culminating in an exchange of datadisks for packages of contraband foodstuffs. Hux suppresses a snarl. It is unwise to start fights, but the urge remains.



Conclusion: There is a community here surviving under the radar, with the local officers ignorant or implicit. This world was claimed by the Order decades ago, passing from Imperial to Order control without question. There should be no space for such things here, where the Alliance has never touched. There should be no way for them to /survive/ without the Order, and yet.  

 

 

~~Here’s a fact: Hux knows what happens on planets in the Order.~~

Here’s a fact, revised: Hux knows what is reported to him by the officers in charge of each sector.

This sector is heavily industrial, and the planets have rare minerals that proved invaluable for constructing Starkiller. The Officer in charge is from an old Imperial family, like many officers in the Order. Hux interacted with her often when getting supplies for Starkiller. She reported full compliance, productivity, occasional civilian trouble but always stamped out. A model sector of the Order.

Hux had believed her. OF course he had. She delivered supplies on time and there was no one saying otherwise.

(Of course there wasn’t, General. Who would bother trying? You’ve already seen what happens when civilians try to interact with the system. All you wanted to do was find out if you existed.)

(You knew what it was like to be here, General – as an officer and child of officers, as the sort of person the system was designed to serve. You should know that – you helped design it, after all. Did it matter then if there were people who didn’t fit in to the ideal? Did it matter what happened to the wrong sorts of people? Of course it didn’t. What could /they/ offer to the Order?)

Hux glances around the hub, narrows his eyes, and sets off exploring.

 

 

Unresolved question:

“What’s your power source?” Kai looks up from what definitely /isn’t/ scrap metal, eyebrows raised in polite confusion. Hux gestures in irritation at the base in general. “I found the water filtration system, the hydroponics, and the pumps for water pressure. There’s not enough sunlight to use solar, you don’t have access to wind or burnable fuel, and powering half of the things I’ve seen in here would take up more energy than you could steal from the plant without them noticing. What’s your power source?” He narrows his eyes at a sudden thought. “These tunnels don’t go deep enough for geothermal, do they?”

Kai grins up at him, sharp and pleased, and swings to their feet. “Not geothermal, no. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

 

 

“Ya know, the factory above is all droid staff, right?” Kai says, leading Hux on a looping track under the factory. “Means they don’t have to worry about dehydration or heat exhaustion, and so they can crank the temps up past what any biologics can handle.” Hux knows this: the planet’s ability to produce metals only workable at extremely high temperatures was part of what made it invaluable for producing parts for Starkiller. The temperature is rising, he notices, and glancing along the wall he sees a pipe running a meter off the ground, hot to the touch even through rough insulation. When he’d noticed it earlier he’d assumed it was part of the water system, but couldn’t find where it connected.

 “You’re right – the tunnels don’t go deep enough for geothermal. But they /do/ go right underneath the smelters.” Kai grins again, quick like they’re sharing a secret, and knocks a knuckle against the pipe as they walk. Hux stares at them, and then narrows his eyes at the pipe –

“They track their energy expenditure,” he says, his mind racing ahead as he starts to figure it out – “But they don’t track heat loss, they just assume the planet is a heat sink, and since they’ve forgotten about these tunnels entirely...” A pause as he tracks the possibilities through. There are schematics running in his head, equations watched with half his mind. “Steam turbine, then?”

Kai’s grin widens. “Got it in one.”

It’s the most sensible solution: pipes run water through a section of tunnels hot enough to turn the water into steam – the steam turns a turbine, which turns a magnet inside of electric coils. It’s the same principle as any power plant that uses coal or wood or even radioactive materials to heat the water.

“…elegant.” Hux finally says, still tracking through the logistics in the back of his mind.

Here’s the surprise: he’s not lying. It is supremely elegant and flawlessly efficient, utilizing limited resources to their greatest capacity. Any engineer would be able to present this solution to their officers proudly. Implementing it internally could increase the energy efficiency of the plant by 10%, at least.

Here’s the thing: they didn’t. Hux thinks back over every plant that works in this temperatures – and no, nothing. Nothing even presented. He would have remembered.

“Hey, thanks!” Kai says, eyes shut, smiling, rubbing the back of their neck and looking ten years younger. Hux still doesn’t know their real age.  “Honestly, I should go kick the condenser for a while, it’s been leaking lately…” Kai winks. “Wanna come help?”

Here’s a surprise: he does.

 

 

The condenser is leaking, and to Hux’s eyes should be replaced entirely. The moment he mentions as such, though, Kai snorts. 

“I’d /like/ to, trust me. But takin’ this thing out means I have to shut down the entire system, and it ain’t like I gotta backup generator anywhere.” Kai swears under their breath, unintelligible but for the tone. “And losin’ power means losing half my tools, and lighting, and…” Kai gestures vaguely with a free hand.

Hux inclines his head, acknowledging the point. Continuous systems always had that trouble, though rarely as severely as this one. “Bypass, maybe?” He taps spots on either side of the condenser with a screwdriver, to indicate junction points.

Here’s a surprise: Hux finds this comfortable. Enjoyable, even.

Here’s a fact: Hux was an engineer before he was a general. Even as he directed battlefields and campaigns, leading the Order to victory and victory (and then failure and failure, or have you forgotten how it ended, General?) – even then, as he found satisfaction in victory, it was a different sort. He had almost forgotten the pleasure of this – this problem solving, the challenge of a puzzle, where the only enemies were his own limits and his own understanding. He had found something of the same sort working on Starkiller, but – not like this.

“Yeah, think I’m gonna, once I can scrounge up the parts…” Kai wipes grease from their face with the back of a hand. “Elbows’re the hardest to find, no idea why…”

Hux knows: elbow joints wear out more quickly, unless they were made of more durable materials – thus, they were more expensive and more carefully monitored.

“Where did you study?” Hux asks, almost absently. It's a natural question, habitual from years ago, when he worked with other engineers and mechanics in person rather than letting his subordinates do it.  It was as close to small talk as he ever managed, and all anyone expected. 

Here’s a surprise, half buried in his mind: here, in this forgotten tunnel and a body that isn’t his, Hux feels at home, his sense of self snapping out of dissonance and settling into familiar patterns.

Kai laughs, loud and echoing in the tunnel, showing off a missing back tooth. "Taught myself, 'course, off of pirated holos mostly." Kai laughs harder at Hux's stare.  "What, you think I could get into one of the Order schools? Have you /seen/ me?" 

(Are you really that surprised, General? Did you really think they would have gotten into an Order academy they way they are, with their ambiguous gender and native accent and foul attitude? Did you really think they would have ended up /here/ if they did? Do you think the Order would have let them walk away?)

"What about you, eh?" Kai smirks. There’s something nasty in it, suddenly. "Arakis Academy, or maybe the one on Ornim?" Here's a surprise: Hux is off balance, surprised just long enough to hesitate. Kai winks, smirk softening once more. "Ya talk like an officer."

Hux inclines his head in response. "... Arakis." He finally says. It’s galling to have been read so easily, but difficult to deny.

Kai hums, nodding, turning back to work on the condenser more. "So what, you get disowned by your parents? 'cause let me tell you, there's no trace of ya in the systems, so whoever you pissed off, you did it good."

Here's a surprise: there's no judgment, no suspicion in their voice. Hux swallows. "Something like that."

"Heh. Fair enough." Kai shrugs, tightening one of the screws with a ragged fingernail. "Truth be told, I tried to get into the one on this planet - I think it's," Kai waves their free hand absently, "Over in the south, somewhere."

Here’s a fact:  Hux knows where it is. He did a speech there, one graduation.  It turned out perfectly competent engineers, some of which went to work on the Finalizer.

Here’s the truth: They were competent, but not exceptional. Useful, but not outstanding. They produced what they were ordered to produce.

(Here’s a secret: he cannot imagine any of them thriving here the way Kai has, creating cybernetics and power supplies out of scrap and stubbornness. He cannot image any of them surviving here in this space between spaces, without order or structure or protocol to guide them.)

"But turns out mom’s…. cousin, I think, married a non-human? Or was gonna, at least, and the neighbors reported it to the politicals ‘fore we did. I mean, fuck, mom hadn’t even spoken to that cousin in ages, not that the Order fuckin’ cared. Blacklisted. Couldn’t denounce what we hadn’t known about, and couldn’t turn over the Alliance Sympathizers we didn’t have….”  Kai grins, one side of their cheek hitched up. "And that was the end of that. After that, well." They gesture again, indicating the tunnels around them.

Hux nods once, very quiet, and gets back to work.

 

 

Here’s the situation, then: Hux is locked out of the legitimate channels to interact with the Order. He is in a (thriving) underground society, which has access to pirated Alliance media – and thus means of getting through the censorship protocols on broadcasts in this region. There is a gap in the security.

Here’s the plan: Hux will build a transmission array capable of reaching an Order ship, which from there a transmission can piggyback into the mainframes. As much as it grates his nerves to exploit security weaknesses in his own systems, he’s certain someone unfamiliar with them wouldn’t be able to infiltrate. From there, he will leak information to the Order – with any luck, he’ll be able to get in touch with someone who believes his wild tale about time travel and from there, he’ll be able to change things properly.

Here’s the problem:

Hux swears under his breath, briefly struggling with the urge to throw the ancient datapad he was using against the tunnel wall. His temper flared more, after Starkiller fell, and grew harder and harder to control with every loss of territory. He had never failed, never threw a tantrum like Ren would, but then, like now, he had to pause and step away from his work.

“Havin’ trouble, El?” Kai buts in, interrupting Hux’s mental recitation of the Loyalty pledge of the Order. Hux closes his eyes and lets out a breath. “What’re you even buildin’, anyway?”

Here’s a fact: explaining the problem to another, or failing that, to a small figurine kept nearby for this very purpose is a recognized method of solving technical design problems. Hux rarely needed it, and never deigned to talk to a rubber loth cat like some programmers he knew, but nevertheless.

“I will not be building /anything/ unless I can figure out a way to store enough code on this thing,” he gestures with the datapad in one hand, “to transmit the way I need to.”

“You’re working on a transmitter?” Kai’s eyebrows go up. “And bring the Security offices down on us when they trace the signal? I like ya El, but I like keepin’ my other leg more.”

Hux’s lip curls into a snarl. He wants to snarl about the future of the Order, but can’t, not without sharing his particular circumstances. And Kai would likely not sympathize, with their bitterness and black market dealing….

(The Order doesn’t support self-interest, that’s true.)

“I can bounce the transmission from one outpost to the next,” he says instead of throwing the datapad at Kai. “And wipe the source information as it goes. I assure you, your operation will be secure.”

Kai doesn’t look convinced. “Assumin’ you can get through the planet’s security. Trust me man, it’s easier to get in than out. I mean, even these, “ they gesture to the Alliance newsfeed projected on the wall, “Only get through because of wide range receptors in the atmo that don’t filter them out.”

“The Order frequencies are allowed through, I can hijack one of those until it gets out of the system.” Hux lets out another breath. He’s no closer to a solution. “Of course, to do that I will need to be able to write a code of more than a dozen lines before the processors start breaking down.”

This, Kai understands. “Ah, yeah. Well, I get what I get around here.”  Kai stretches out on their own bench again, and then shoots Hux a considering look. “I’ll let you know if something better comes in. Just keep me posted, eh? I can think of a few people who might wanna be able to send signals off’ve this rock.”

Concerned about their business, of course. (So cynical, General?) But Hux nods, and gets back to work.

 

 

Here’s a routine: Hux gets up, remembering as he stands that this body is not his. He spends the morning in front of the projector with Kai, earning his keep by fixing and building things out of the scrap mental and assorted electronics people bring them. It’s almost upsetting, how enjoyable it is – the challenge of making workable tech out of scrap, the stretch to his creativity and innovation. There are no computer models, no programs except what he can butcher together on Kai’s ancient and half-functional datapads.

It is frustrating, aggravating to know that if he had the right tools and materials he could make something better. It is /exhilarating/, knowing that a lesser engineer wouldn’t be able to make anything with these materials. 

There is chatter, largely on Kai’s end, as they seem to talk to themselves as they work. Hux ignores most of it, much as he ignores the Alliance propaganda on the wall behind them.

Here’s an exchange: “Why the hell do you watch that shit, Kai?” One of the others, a Duros who runs piping sometimes, complains with a gesture to the wall. “Ain’t like the Alliance ever did shit for us.”

Kai smirks, vicious like their smiles turn sometimes. “The Officers’ don’t want ya to have it, mate, ain’t that reason enough?”

Hux ignores this, and the laughter that follows. His lip curls into a snarl, but he makes sure they can’t see.

In the afternoons he works on his transmission array, and swears, and brushes black hair out of his eyes a dozen times, and writes hundreds of lines of code on an ancient datapad, knowing that he’s constrained by things out of his control. He counts days and lines of code, watches the date on the Alliance newsfeeds, and tries not to hear a ticking chrono in his mind. He feels – not anxious, but tense.

(This is the first time you’ve gone this long without a battlefield in years, General. Since Starkiller, or even before it, you’ve been running from one battle to the next on too much caff and too little sleep, burning yourself to fuel the Order.)

Late into the night he plans what he’ll work on the next day, and thinks about what has happened to him, and why. While freak chance cannot be ruled out, even with and perhaps especially with the Force, something about this feels intentional.

(You think about Ren, once or twice, and pretend that the thought of him being responsible doesn’t tug on anything inside of you. If you admit it, you pretend it’s frustration.)

 

 

 

"Seriously," Kai snarls, their metal leg half split open as they work on it in front of the screen, "What a goddamned /waste/.”

Hux raises his eyebrows at the other engineer - he's heard a lot of objections to Starkiller, but that's a new one.  Kai catches his expression and snorts, closing up their leg and putting it to the ground with a metallic clang. They’re both settled on benches in front of the projector showing Alliance news stations, Hux snarling over his transmission array, frustrated that there’s no way to finish before the firing.

Here’s a fact: they only allowed Alliance camera drones near Starkiller for the firing, and never close enough to get detail. The speech itself was beamed through Order channels.

"Look, El, you're good with this shit, right? You know the kind of design that went into building that thing? Hux figured out how to harvest the fucking /stars/ and hold dark energy stable long enough to process it." Hux nods, fully aware of how unprecedented his life's work was. "He'd have to have invented metals just to keep the core stable with the star inside of it, or done shit that no one's ever done before with construction. And that's not even talking about getting the damn star in there in the first place!" Kai flexes their foot, a standard functioning check, and gestures with a screwdriver in irritation. "All that fucking brilliant design work, all that invention and innovation and genius, and he's wasting on making /weapons/."

Hux is silent, staring, but Kai continues. "That kind of a power source and he could have eliminated the need for non-renewable fuels for the entire Outer Rim. He could have used the power of one fucking star to fuel the entirety of Order Space for /free/.  Why the fuck would you bother attacking the enemy when you can out-compete them?"  Kai shakes their head, hair shaken loose of the bandana. "Such a goddamned waste."

Here's a fact: Hux had never considered using the power of Starkiller for anything other than war. He'd come up with the weapon first, and then found the only thing capable of powering it second.

Here’s a memory: presenting the concept of Starkiller to a room of officers, who all looked at him and thought "Brendol" before they thought "Hux", all old Imperials. Exile-born officers wouldn't make their way through the academies until a few years later. Hux remembers how he spoke to them that day - there were few technical details, because he knew that few of the officers would understand them. Instead, he talked about the Legacy of the Empire, the Birthright that had been denied them by the Rebellion.  He spoke about friends of his father, lost on the Death Stars, about duty and honor, about justice.

"They have taken what should have been the Empire's crown jewel and turned it into the symbol of its defeat. Let us take it /back/."

The officers looked at him, at him and not at the memory of Brendol, and slowly there was agreement around the table, and not a single suggestion of other applications of the technology.

(So busy chasing the memory of the Empire they never looked at anything else. It was never about what was best for the people in Order Territory, was it? Blinded by revenge and the glory you all felt you were owed, you never considered another option.)

On the screen, Starkiller fires – and a few moments later, the news channel cuts out.  The room is silent.

(Somewhere lightyears away, Kaja holds her pet cat and her wife, and refuses to stare at the sky.) 

Hux leaves before he has to listen to the others respond.

 

 

Hardly two days pass before Hux is in front of the projector once more, a crowd silent around him as he watches the Resistance attack. 

It is different, watching the death of Starkiller this way, on a fuzzy newsfeed pirated from the Alliance. It is different, watching the observational cameras flicker out or flee, seeing the cloud of evacuation ships around the collapsing planet and know which ones aren’t going to make it. It is different, knowing that it is the end of all his ambitions instead of just feeling like it.

The First Order could have recovered from this. He knew it then, and he knows it now – this wound it deep, but not fatal. The Order could have recovered, but it didn’t. It won’t, not without something changed. Nothing has changed, his warnings unable to reach anyone who mattered.

Perhaps this is the reason for all this time travel nonsense – so that he would be able to save his masterpiece.

(Really, General, you’ve been paying more attention than /that/.)

Hux sits on a rough bench in front of a fuzzy projector, and smells the memory of ozone and smoke as the last cameras around Starkiller explode in the blast.

 

 

Kai sits with him, long after everyone else has left. On the wall, the pirated Republic newsfeed shows looped footage of the supernova that was the only remnant of Starkiller. The banner at the bottom of the screen shows estimated death tolls for the Republic and the Resistance. Deaths within the Order are not mentioned. Apparently they didn’t have enough data.

Here’s the numbers: from the initial collapse, three hundred officers, one thousand Stormtroopers, and six hundred technicians; the resulting supernova destroyed approximately half of the ships that had been stationed at the base, resulting in at least 9 thousand casualties across all ranks. The hardest hit was the engineering core, which had moved to Starkiller almost in its entirety and lost 73% of its members.

(Here are the numbers: one Stormtrooper died for every six weeks in the construction of Starkiller. One technician for every eight weeks.  How does the math work out, General?)

“There’ll be purges, ya know.” Kai says, their voice dull and their eyes not leaving the display. “The officers’re gonna panic, gonna lash out at anything that might be a threat to the power they’ve got left. Gotta feel in control, ya know.” Hux says nothing. It’s not an inaccurate prediction. Kai looks over, a hint of expression on their face, something tired and bitter and resigned. “If you think that officer father of yours might’ve a scrap of concern for you, now’s the time to find out.” Hux snorts and shakes his head. Even if he were in his own life, Brendol Hux would spare him no concern. Kai huffs out a harsh chuckle. “Figures. Eh, it was worth a shot.”

Kai pushes up to their feet, the metal of their prosthetic clanging against the tunnel floor.

“I know some people’re makin’ a break for Alliance space, thinkin’ it’ll be easier to slip through while the border guards’re busy with clean up. I ain’t sure, but it’s as good a chance as we’re gonna get, I think, and it’s about as risky as stayin’ here.” Kai huffs another tired laugh, kicks a bit of rubble with another clang. “Not sure I’ll be able to bribe the officers with Alliance holo channels after this.

“Wanna come with?” Hux stares at him, doesn’t reply. “I could use somebody else who knows how to use a screwdriver around the place, and if we get past the borders I can drop you off wherever ya want. I hear Corellia’s got a pretty good naturalization process.” Kai catches the look on Hux’s face and shrugs. Their smile is tired. “Or you can stay here if you want. You can run the place about as well as I can, really. Whichever way you pick, I’m leavin’ within the next day, so…. Let me know, all right?”

Hux nods, looking away.

Here’s a fact: Anyone attempting to leave Order space without official documentation is a punishable offense, resulting in – at the very least – detainment at the border.

Here’s one option: He could go with them, escape the transmission barriers and then send messages to Order high command. Plausibility of success: medium to low.

Here’s another: Stay here, continue working on his transmission array albeit without Kai’s assistance or connections, and hope he can make it in time. Plausibility of success: low.

Here’s a solution: A majority of the engineering core died with Starkiller. Hux remembers in the weeks and months afterwards, scrambling for any half-capable engineer and eventually pulling up barely trained students to fill ranks. An engineer of Kai’s talent and resourcefulness would have made those days much easier.  

The local officers are familiar with Kai, and know their skills. The issue of the blacklist complicates things, but Kai is useful, valuable, and that is more important.

(Really, General? Sacrificing ideology and procedure? Making an /exception/?)

It will be for the good of the Order.

(Excuses, excuses.)

Kai would not accept it without reasonable proof of its plausibility (you think they would accept it at all, General?) so Hux does not suggest it immediately. The decimation of the engineering core was not publicized, in a mostly futile attempt to prevent panic. Kai would ask questions, ones Hux would have few answers for without revealing his own foreknowledge.

His plan, then: approach the officers himself and make the deal, then return for Kai. He doesn’t expect it will take long to convince the officers.

“I’m going above ground,” he calls out. Kai raises their eyebrows at him.

“If you’re sure, El. Just be careful.” Hux nods, once, and climbs the ladder to the outside world.

 

 

 

Here’s a fact: people on the blacklist legally do not exist. They cannot interact with institutions in any way – they are cut off from healthcare, education, and justice.

Here’s another fact: this includes after death. If someone’s would not be valuable enough to capture and interrogate immediately, then they are not valuable enough to keep alive.

(Here’s the reason, General: it’s about social control, about making people /careful/. It isn’t about intel, because there are better ways to do that – it’s about making sure people do what they’re told, and keeping things /Orderly/.)

Here’s the effect: if someone is on the blacklist, there is little to no punishment for killing them.

The officer stares down at him, and then holsters his plasma gun and walks away. 

The third time General Hux dies, he’s collapsed in an alleyway of a city on one of his own planets. It will take minutes for the blast to kill him, the blasterfire corroding his body, but no matter– he hardly has breath to scream and there’s no one here who would dare listen.

He touches the gaping hole in his stomach, some part of his mind automatically cataloging each wound and tracking the progress of death. The other times he died had been almost instant. Three minutes until he goes into shock, he absently estimates. And then almost two years until the Order falls, just as it did before and Before, history unchanged yet again.

(The third time General Hux dies, it is like this: the shocking burn of blasterfire to his stomach, plasma slowly eating away at his internal organs. It is the indifference on the officer’s face and the acid burn of /betrayal/ in his own throat, the rules he had spent his life hardening refusing to bend.)

(The third time he dies, it is like this: fire creeping up the inside his ribs, spasms wracking his body and his mind noting each one like the countdown timer on a weapon.)

(It is like this: it is long, and agonizing, and almost entirely unnoticed.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 specific tags: invasive security procedures, totalitarian government, surveillance state, mentions of speciesism, classism, space McCarthyism, kylux subtext, brief gore
> 
>  
> 
> Alternative title: gratuitous engineering and a cardboard cutout of Joseph McCarthy, because the author is a nerd in several directions at once


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, warning tags and spoiler title is in the end notes. Buckle up, darlings.

T=-3 “How to make a soldier” 

 

Hux awakens in a crowd.

His stomach seethes, skin caught in the after burn of plasmafire. He is whole and he is standing, but for the space of one painful breath it is in question.

Bodies press against him. He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes –

White on every side, an image he’s seen a hundred times but never from this angle – the weight of armor on his shoulders, and the tint of a visor in his vision.

 

Observations:

  1. He is on a standard transport carrier, capable of moving several hundred Stormtroopers at once. This one does not appear to be carrying its full capacity, as there is still space to move. Possibly one hundred fifty troopers, no more than two hundred.
  2. He is dressed in Stormtrooper armor, properly fitted.
  3. No one is reacting to his presence, as if he is unremarkable, no different from anyone else in the crowd.



 

(You know what it all means, General. You just wish that you didn’t.)

 Conclusion: He is – or the body he is in – is a Stormtrooper, on route to a new assignment.

Potential issues: in his previous lives he did not exist in any sort of system, and so the origin of his body was unknown. He was able to exist outside of the systems, but no such thing will be possible as a Stormtrooper. If he does not exist in the files he will be eliminated.

Potential advantage: As a Stormtrooper with a legitimate file, he would be able to work within the system rather than around it. None of the delays that plagued him before would be a factor.

He glances around, as subtle as possible, evaluating the feel of the carrier, both at the Stormtroopers and the attending officers. Calm, uniform – there is no sign of unease or fear among the troops, and no aggression from the officers.

Conclusion: He has been brought back to a point in time before Starkiller, and, perhaps more crucially, before FN-2187’s defection.

Here’s his theory, much deliberated on in the time since: The fall of the Order starts with FN-2187. There were threats before him, of course, but without FN-2187 the Scavenger Girl would never have left Jakku, and the map to Skywalker would not have been lost. Without FN-2187 the Stormtrooper rebellions would never start or perpetuate; without FN-2187, Starkiller would not have been lost.

Therefore: Prevent FN-2187 from defecting to the Resistance by any means necessary.

(So arrogant, General, to think that there was only one fatal flaw in your plan. Did you think that for want of a single Soldier your Empire would reign forever? Did you really think that the first one to run was the only one that ever wanted to?)

Hux sets his feet, sets his mind to planning, and waits for the transport to land in silence.

 

Purpose of the Stormtrooper Program, as established in the founding documents of the Order:

  1. Produce a steady supply of loyal soldiers for the expansion and sustainment of the Order.
  2. Give planets in the Order an alternative means of paying taxes.
  3. Produce soldiers who are acclimated to the stressors of military life and thus will not suffer ptsd, battle shock, etc.
  4. Produce soldiers that have all of the strengths of individuality but none of its weaknesses – diversity of skills but singularity of purpose. Many tools for one great work. 
    1. (You don’t get to have /both/, General.)



 

 

“You will all be fully re-evaluated and potentially re-assigned,” the officer at the front says when the ship docks, and Hux narrows his eyes. “Memorize your new designation as soon as possible, as your previous ones will not be used.”

The reassignment and re-designation is not unusual, though not standard; full re-evaluation at each new assignment would be a waste of time and money. The only time they did such a thing on the Finalizer was when records had been destroyed by Resistance attack at one end and by Ren’s careless destruction on the other, and there was a snarl confused of shipping manifests and it was easier to just evaluate them and rebuild their files rather than trying to find scraps of data in the mainframes–

-ah. Well.

Here’s a thought, sarcastic: well, that’s one way for a previously nonexistent Stormtrooper to be added to the system.

Here’s another: He has a sense of his time frame, now. That particular combination of factors happened once, roughly six months before Starkiller was fired.

Six months, then, to prevent FN-2187 from betrayal. It would not prevent the whole of the damage, but what remained could be handled by his in-time-line counterpart.

(Really, General? Willing to let someone else take the glory of saving the Order while you disappear into the Stormtrooper corps, invisible with your success? Is it all right if it’s still General Hux in the history books, then?)

It is an honor to serve the Order in any capacity, even as a Stormtrooper.

(Here’s a secret, General: you don’t really believe that. There’s a part of you that’s been snarling for the last four hours you’ve been on this transport, resentful that you’ve been shoved into this position – once again a part of the Order, but only as a /Trooper/.

You’d never say it out loud, rarely even thought it – but it was there, tucked underneath your actions: it doesn’t matter what happens to them, really, they’re only troopers. If they were meant for anything more, they wouldn’t have been trained as Stormtroopers. Phasma was an exception, a Stormtrooper who was capable of better things – but only that, an exception. )

 

The Ideal Stormtrooper will:

  1. Be in peak physical condition for species as detailed in training manual (pgs 12-15; acceptable species found on pg 6)
  2. Be free of mental illness (delusions, anxiety, depression or mania, etc; a full list can be found on pg 39)
  3. Be capable of initiative, independent strategizing, and self-improvement for the good of the Order.
  4. Understand their purpose and be fully loyal to the ideals of the Order.
  5. Maintain purity of thought, self-report to reconditioning if necessary, and watch their squad mates for seditious potential. (Signs detailed on pg 40 - list not exhaustive.)



 

 

Evaluation of a Stormtrooper involves physical fitness and endurance – demands Hux is both surprised and pleased to know that his current body has no problem meeting, even unused to armor as he is– but also skill assessment and mission fitness.

Hux steps into the testing simulation with three troopers and waits.

Here’s a fact: He wrote many of the sims himself, albeit it many years ago, and is familiar with most of them.  The aluation sims are slightly different than the training sims – more focus on improvisation and looser requirements, to better evaluate what they will do without specific orders and what they naturally gravitate to.

Around them, the walls of the simulation chamber shimmer and shift, and a small village emerges out of the light.  Hux draws in a breath, and lets it out. Here’s a fact: the remnants of the Empire added guerrilla fighting and urban control to the program after the defeat at Endor. Hux remembers his father working on it, when he was very young.

Mission parameters: members of the resistance have infiltrated the town and are planning to start a riot.  Eliminate with less than 15 civilian casualties.

Time limit: 2 hours.

Supplies: one sniper rifle, two blasters, one spark rod. Four standard packs.

Hux glances over the setting, and the supplies. He picks up the rifle. “Draw them towards the tower,” he says, gesturing to indicate the only high point in the setting, “I will offer support fire from there.”

A moment, and the troopers nod in agreement and grab their preferred gear. Hux turns, and heads into the simulated town to climb the tower.

Here’s a fact: Hux was, in the academy, an excellent sniper. He rarely had the chance to use since becoming an officer, it but even now he appreciates the elegance of it: the stillness, the quiet, the calculations running in his head to account for air resistance and plasma drag. It is clean and efficient in a way that always appealed to him.

Hux settles in his chosen perch, and watches.

The faces of the townspeople below are slightly blurred, and the faces of Resistance members are slightly over exaggerated, caricatured – micro alterations to their expressions that are barely perceptible on the conscious level. Here’s a reason: such alterations triggered an instinctual revulsion in the viewer, a sense that what they saw was unnatural. It had proved useful, to ensure an association between that revulsion and the Resistance.

(Here’s the problem, as old as war: people are, on a whole, unwilling to hurt other people. There are exceptions, of course, but not enough to build an army out of. It’s one of the building blocks of a stable society – people who are uncomfortable with doing lasting harm to other people.

Here’s the solution, possibly even older: well, they’re not really /people/, right? Not in the ways the matter.

And so, this is how you make a soldier: you train them not to think about what they’re doing; call it an exercise, or a drill, or a game; repeat the actions so often it becomes instinct instead of choice. You use drones or snipers, separate the will from the action as much as possible. You turn the other side into ghouls or monsters or blips of data on a screen or theoretical constructs. Of course you need to kill them; can’t you see they’re not supposed to exist?)

(And so, this is how you make a general: teach them that the common soldiers are resources, like a tank or a ship – valuable for what you can do with them rather than out of any inherent worth. Think in terms of dollar signs instead of quality of life, of usefulness instead of happiness. Numbers, not lives. They’re not really /people/, not in the ways that matter.)

Hux watches as a crowd begins to form in the square below him, herded by the trooper with a shock rod. A single figure pulls out of the crowd and climbs onto a speeder – they open their mouth and start to shout about the things the Alliance could offer to those who join, that the Alliance only wants to help. Hux ignores it as he lines up his shot.

(Here’s a memory, flashed against the inside of his eyes: Kaja, passionately explaining her plan to train doctors, and set up hospitals in the Outer Rim, unconcerned about the danger.)

Hux squeezes the trigger, and the speaker falls. Headshot; an instant kill.

(Here’s a secret: Hux remembers the sensation of plasma eating his stomach away.)

Here’s the ranking: by the end of evaluations Hux has led strategy in four different sims, completing them in half the time allotted. He’s also gained the nickname “Sniper.”

 

 

He’s assigned the number EL-2999, and doesn’t bother to be surprised.

 

 

EL squadron was stationed in one of the lower levels of the Fnalizer, far away from the command decks. They were down a trooper, and it was judged that a long range specialist with strategic skills would be able to integrate. Hux follows the officer down to their bunks, most of his attention on the surroundings.

Here's a fact: the Finalizer fell, near the end of the war. The magnificent ship had managed to limp to an outpost and disgorge its survivors, but Hux had taken one look at it and known that the only ship he'd called his was never going to fly again. It had hurt to salvage it for parts, but there were no other options by then. There were always so few options, by then.

It is - good, to see it whole and undamaged, its machinery humming steadily beneath him and around him. It is good to see it populated, not yet a floating coffin. It is familiar, and if Hux were a more fanciful man, he would be able to pretend nothing had changed.

(That's not true, General - look again.)

Eyes slide over him as if he is not there, as if he were a droid or a piece of furniture. Officers who never failed to salute barely register him now - in the stormtrooper armor, he hardly exists. It itches at him, the uncomfortable lack of attention.  He was not made to be invisible. He is aware that he is not General Hux, here, in this place where he should be.

The officer stops and opens a door with a palm. The troopers inside the barracks look up and salute. "The locks are keyed to a chip in your helmet. You're on Alpha shift. Don't be late to the mess hall."  And the officer walks away, the door shutting behind him.

Here’s a fact: FN-2178 had been assigned to Delta shift. An encounter would be difficult to arrange, but there’s more than one method at his disposal.

“You’re the new guy?” One of the troopers says. Hux nods. “Hi! I’m EL-3777. Spitz.” The trooper sounds female, and inordinately cheerful. Hux notes the use of the nickname. It’s non regulation, but rarely punished for – no amount of reconditioning could make them stop doing it, and so it was only an issue if they did not respond their designation. “This is Nova – 3974,” She says, pointing to a taller trooper sitting on the bunk across from her, “And this is Lucky, 1729.” A young man with his helmet and cleaning kit in his lap waves. “What’s your number?”

“…El-2999.” Beneath his helmet, he scowls. “Sniper.”

“You’re the new long-range guy?” Nova says. Hux nods. “Good. Mission sims start right after breakfast. Your bunk is over there.”

And that, it seems, is that.

 

 

Here are moments:

Hux salutes the banner of the First Order, reciting the Pledge of the First Order in time with the mess hall. Officers only repeat the pledge at public occasions, but Stormtroopers say it at the start of every shift.  “I pledge my life to the First Order and to the Restored Empire,” he says, the words echoing in his bones the way they always have, “One Galaxy under One Leader, Undefeatable, for as long as I draw breath. “ 

Hux rolls his eyes at breakfast and takes Lucky’s comm, fixing it with a few adjusted wires and handing it back. “Maybe we should call you Techie, eh?” Spitz says, bumping against his shoulder and laughing at his glare.

Nova shows him the best ways to patrol on the Finalizer, which routes are more likely to have trouble – there’s an entire collection of hallways that are considered dangerous, which Hux recognizes as Ren’s preferred haunts and has to keep from laughing. These squads are easy to deal with, those officers aren’t, here’s alternate routes and these are the quickest ways to reach the bridge. She is easy to deal with, calm and competent in a way that reminds him of Phasma, and her presence grates on him the least. They spend long hours on patrol together, Hux relearning the ship he called home, and rarely feel the need talk.

Hux carves out a few moments of privacy, more difficult to do as a trooper than he expected, to access the computer systems of the Finalizer. The easiest way to do this would be to get into the disciplinary systems and add infractions to FN-2187’s file, enough to have him pulled into reconditioning and any potential treason removed. But all computer use is monitored, and while Hux knows alternative ways in he knows those ways would gain too much of the wrong sort of attention. There are some codes that only General Hux knows, and their use would flag alerts. He’s never given enough time to do any true digital infiltration, and it grates on him.

The officer observing their training sims comments on Hux’s strategies, and mentions specialized training with Captain Phasma if the squad continues to improve. FN squad, Hux knows, also underwent some of the same specialized training. FN-2187 was on a promotion track, before his defection. Hux inclines his head, considers his plans, and decides it may be his way in.

 

 

Here are details, gained over weeks of sims and training:

Nova gained her nickname after witnessing a super nova on her previous assignment, the _Minotaur_ , and being fascinated by the expression of power it represented. (Here’s a secret: Hux understands.) Lucky is young and impulsive and has never been injured, even in brutal sims. Spitz was named by an officer for her cheerful and friendly personality. Nova likes patrol best, and Lucky likes running sims, and Spitz is an excellent shot with a blaster but no good over long distances, and Nova and Spitz have been in this squadron together for as long as they remember and always chat after sims, and -

(This is why your father made them wear masks, General. This is what happens, when you can’t cut yourself off from people; comradery, companionship, connection. Humans are /social/, General.)

(You can’t have an Us against Them without an Us, General.)

 

 

“EL-2999.” The officer says as they leave their daily sim, and Hux pauses. “Report to reconditioning.”

A pause, but there’s only one correct answer even as his mind spins with possibilities. “Yes sir.”

“Hey, I’ll save you a spot at dinner, okay?” Spitz says, bumping shoulders with him as she tends to. “It’s probably just a check in, you’ve been doing great…”

Hux nods, and separates from the rest of the squad without another word.

 

Potential signs of Sedition in Stroomtroopers, found in the Stormtrooper Manual on pg 40:

Remember: this list is not exhaustive. Anything that is suspicious should be reported to a relevant superior or assigned for investigation.

  1. Curiosity about the Alliance outside of strategic or military applications
  2. Questioning orders, direct insubordination
  3. Secrecy, evasive behavior
  4. Consumption, acquisition, or production of non-approved media
  5. Habitual removal of helmet in non-approved settings
  6. Questions, investigations into, or requests for information about birth family or planet of origin
  7. Committed romantic involvement with another trooper (committed in this case lasting longer than 6 standard months)
  8. Related to 6: any romantic involvement or emotional commitment with a trooper that has been reprimanded for seditious tendencies in the past
  9. Hesitation in firing on enemy, including noncombatants
  10. Refusal to answer to designation, insistence on chosen 'name'



 

 

“El-2999.” The officer begins, not rising from the desk. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Honesty is his best option, here. “No, Sir.”

The officer makes a note on his datapad. “While you have been doing very well in the sims, there have been concerns about your behavior in your free time.”

A pause, to see if he will confess or justify. But Hux honestly doesn’t know, and so settles on, “sir?”

The officer makes another note. “You have been recorded spending an unusual amount of time in the data systems and seem to be fixated on particular other squads.”

Here’s the problem: His instincts are all wrong - he pushes back when pushed and sets his stance when challenged. He is proud and determined, the pride of the Academy, the culmination of all of their teachings – he does not face any authority without the knowledge that one day, /he/ will be the authority.

Armitage Elan Hux was not raised a Stormtrooper. A Stormtrooper would know how to bend, how to swallow their pride without it coming back up as anger. A Stormtrooper, by design, would have very little pride to swallow.

General Hux is not a Stormtrooper. He can fake it, but only for so long.

 Here is the proper response: “Yes sir, I understand sir. What should I do to prevent this in the future?”

Here’s what Hux says instead:

“Sir, my intention was to seek out other high performing squads and compare techniques and regimes, and possibly train together. That is not forbidden in the handbook.”

(Here’s your mistake, General: ‘not forbidden’ isn’t the same as ‘allowed.’)

The officer makes another note on his datapad.

“El-2999.” The officer says, and there’s a strange tone to his voice. Almost gentle and yet… not. “We want you to be the best stormtrooper you can be, so that the Order can be the best it can be.”  The standard line. “And that can only happen if you trust us.”

“I do, however,” Hux pauses as the officer makes another note on the pad, and realizes what he’s done wrong.

A Good Stormtrooper accepts what they have been told. A Stormtrooper does not /argue/ with an officer in charge of their reconditioning.

The officer watches him a moment longer, and then makes another note. “You will be Reconditioned until you no longer show signs of unacceptable behaviors. Your squad will be informed.” 

There’s only one response: “Yes sir.”

 

(You wrote the original procedures on reconditioning, General. This was your contribution to your father’s legacy, after all, perfecting what he began. They have been altered since you began focusing on other projects, but at their core they are still yours. You know them from start to finish, and knowing them means they hold no threat to you, right? You have nothing to be afraid of, right?

Buckle up, General.)

 

 

Hux is led to a standard observation chamber. The walls are white. There are no furnishings beyond a small ‘fresher in the corner. There are cameras covering every angle.

It would be intolerable for long periods – is designed to be so. But Hux does not expect to be here for long enough to be the case. (Oh, General.)

“EL-2999.” The officer starts. “You have displayed a lack of focus. Why did you not report this as soon as it began?”

“It was out of a desire for self-improvement, sir. I did not think it would be an issue.”

“Why did you seek out this information on other squads?” The same question, phrased differently. It’s standard tactic. Hux hates having it aimed at him.

“I wanted to help the Order,” He finally says, his voice snapping more than is appropriate. The officer makes a note on his pad once more.

“You will help the Order by doing what you are told, trooper.”

That isn’t true. The Order needs his information, needs him to stop FN-2187. Without his efforts the Order will fall.

He nearly says so. But he knows what the response would be – the fate of the Order could not lie on a single trooper. If he gave his information now, he would be dismissed as delusional. He remembers what happened in his last life, approaching an officer with an offer and receiving a blaster shot instead.

Here’s a fact: he wants to serve the Order.

Here’s the problem: What the Order wants from and what he needs to give it are not the same.

(You’ve always given your very life for the Order, General, done what ever asked of you. Is it so different, now that you can see that what it asks of you is its own destruction?)

“You are arrogant,” the officer says. His accusations are flat and damning. “You believe you know better than what you have been told. You do not accept correction. You do not accept instruction. You will be taught.”

There’s only one response. “Yes sir.”

 

Here’s a fact: all officers of the Order go through interrogation training, both on how to administer it and how to endure it. Hux excelled, able to withstand any technique his instructors used against him.

Here’s the problem: Reconditioning, while using many of the same techniques, is not interrogation. The goal is not the extraction of information, but the correction of attitudes.

 

 

He is not sure how long he has been awake.

He knows this is procedure, a standard technique to weaken both prisoners and troopers. He has used it on others.

Here’s a fact, unavoidable: it is still effective if he knows how it works.

He is not allowed to pace. He is not allowed to rest. He is allowed to study the Stormtrooper code, or recite the Pledge. He is allowed to drill. He is, technically, allowed to stand at parade rest and stare at the white walls of the observation chamber (cell) and wait for an officer to enter.

It would be tempting to measure the passage of time by the arrival of meals and officers, but Hux knows better; the arrival times are randomized, intentionally out of synch with the rest of the ship and biorhythms.

Hux knows this. He wrote these procedures himself; the intentional disorientation, the lack of stability, the lack of anchors or reality outside of the chamber and the words of the officers. It is designed to force a person to distrust themselves and their perceptions, and to put that trust into something else. Hux didn’t understand why the human mind worked that way, but it did. That was enough.

(Bit different when it’s not someone else, eh, General?)

 

 

Here’s a fact: torture eventually loses its efficacy. Even the most novel of suffering becomes commonplace with repetition; there is nothing that a mind will not eventually get used to.

(Here’s a secret: you never called it torture before, did you General?)

Here’s another fact: there is a point at which the mind breaks, gives in, willing to agree to anything to make the pain stop. This is a problem with interrogations, as it can result in inaccurate and meaningless information intended to appease the torturer; however, it is the goal of reconditioning, the breaking down of resistance and psychological barriers to the point that the mind is able to be adjusted.

Here’s the question: which point Hux will reach first. 

 

 

 

Here’s a fact: He is slipping. He is slipping and losing his grip and forgetting what he is supposed to hold on to.

Spots sparkle in the corner of his vision. Four days without sleep, this time, he estimates. The lack of certainty bothers him.

Here are the effects of sleep deprivation: disorientation, disassociation, headaches, lapses in memory, muscle pain, and others.

Question: how does he know this? It is not covered in the Stormtrooper manual.

Reminder: He knows it because he researched it when he was revising the manual. In the – month before he took formal control of the program from – his father.

Reminder: he is Armitage Hux. He is a General of the First Order. He is out of his time and out of his body but he is not yet out of his mind.

Question: is there proof?

Answer: only in his own mind.

(Afraid that’s going to have to be enough, General. That’s it, General, so hold on to it: hold onto your pride and your certainty a little bit longer. Your sense of self was not broken by two lives in another body. You can survive a little bit longer. You /have/ to.)

Potential verification: once he is released, he will be able to seek out supporting information.

Problem: he will have to be released while yet maintaining knowledge of the potential discrepancies. A good Stormtrooper would ask their officer, explain their concerns.

(A good Stormtrooper who said what you’re thinking would get shot and shoved out an airlock, General.)

Problem: he wants to be a good Stormtrooper. He does. He wants to be what the Order asks of him. That is as certain as anything else in his mind.

Here is a certainty, however: he will have to make a choice, and soon. The Order demands that he is no longer General Hux, insists that he never was. If General Hux is to survive, if he ever existed, he will have to disobey the Order.

(Which instinct is stronger, General? You swore an oath to obey the Order – but your father swore an oath to die for the Emperor, too. The Order was /built/ out of the survivors of the Empire – those who were too smart, too powerful, or too ruthless to be caught by the Alliance. They were the ones who saw the changing balance of power and prepared for it, who did not shed their last drop of blood for the Empire; the people who refused to die with their Emperor. Will you die now for a dying Order?)

Plan: Analyze the information and come to a conclusion. Strategy is something that Hux and EL-2999 share.

Here are things he is certain of: He has knowledge that has not been taught to him as a Stormtrooper. He has emotional responses that would not be trained into Stormtroopers. He has memories, yet, of being someone other than EL-2999.

Note: these things are sometimes out of his grasp, but they seem consistent in details.  He remembers his father, and the man’s features do not change. He knows Phasma, and her rare smiles. He is certain that he knows Kylo Ren’s true face. These things feel familiar, solid. He knows every inch of the ship he is on – he forces himself to remember that he is /on/ a ship. There is a galaxy outside of this ~~cell~~ chamber.

(There you go, General. You’ve seen the outside, don’t forget it now.)

He is General Hux. He will not forget again.

 

 

Here are facts: His name is Armitage Elan Hux. He was a General of the First Order. He built Starkiller. He destroyed the Hosnian System when he was 34. The Order fell when he was 36 and he killed himself rather than face capture. He has been thrown through time and space three times.

Here is a fact: His name is Armitage Elan Hux, a General of the First Order.

Here is a fact: His ~~designation~~ name is Armitage Hux

Here is a fact: his designation is –

“EL-2999.”

“Yes sir.”

 

 

He is slipping again. He does not remember why it is vital to hold onto who he is, only that it is – he is clinging to that fact at the expense of all others. He is Armitage Hux and this is not his life.

Here’s the problem: the officers can tell he is holding something back.

(Here’s a fact, General: you are going to have learn how to /lie/.)

Here’s a surprise: he learns.

It is, he thinks in a moment when he can remember when he learned the concept, not unlike guarding thoughts against a force user. He holds his mind in separate levels, his mouth and mind moving separately from each other. He holds the knowledge of a Stormtrooper on the outside and does not let it penetrate.

Here’s the truth: Hux is not naturally double natured. He will not be able to maintain this for long.

Here’s the question: will it be long enough?

(Little bit longer, General. Just a little bit longer.)

 

 

Hux has been released. It is tentative, he knows, probationary – his squadron will be expected to report on him for any slips or errors in behavior.

He will be back in that white cell tomorrow. But at least tonight he can sleep in his own bunk.

Here’s a surprise, except not really: he can’t sleep. His mind is still caught up, stuck on repeat: his name is Armitage Hux and he is a General of the First Order.  

Hux – his name is Hux, he has a name – forces a breath in, and then out again.

Nova sits on the bunk next to him. He looks up, but she just shrugs a shoulder and doesn’t speak. Hux doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything.

Here’s a secret: it is – nice. Undemanding. An offer, one Hux hardly recognizes; one he is almost weak enough to accept.

Eventually, the lights go out. Nova bumps against his shoulder, like Spitz always does, and leaves without speaking.

Here’s a surprise: Hux has no trouble sleeping, after that.

 

 

Here’s a routine: Hux wakes up and reports immediately to Reconditioning. He spends the day under observation, from meals to drills to hours of studying and repeating the Pledge of the Order and the Stormtrooper manual. Then, testing – rapid-fire call and response, making sure the ideology has been rendered to the level of instinct –

In his head, where they can’t hear: I am Armitage Hux I am Hux I am –

In the evenings, Nova sits next to him in silence. They do not speak, or touch except to brush shoulders. It is quiet and Hux finds himself grateful for every night she sits down next to him. In the quiet dimness he rebuilds himself, though he does not know how many pieces are missing.

He has no idea how much time has passed, and only sometimes remembers why it would matter.

 

One final session. Hux salutes and repeats the Pledge of the Order (Getting sick of it yet, General?) and swears once more to always follow his duty.

“If you feel yourself failing into disorder, you will report to us.”

“Yes sir.”

“And if you are unsure if actions are allowed to you, you will seek guidance.”

“Yes sir.”

“We want to help you.”

“Yes sir.”

Hux is bundled onto a transport, once again one faceless trooper among many. He does not look around for his squadron. He does not sleep.

 

 

This is procedure: Stormtrooper squads are stationed on Starkiller for several months at a time at remote outposts, in order to maintain observation over the entirety of the base. These squads are drawn from both the Stormtroopers permanently housed there and squads from the Finalizer. The outposts are set equidistant from each other and the main base, allowing for variations in geography, and isolated except for supply drops and personal rotations, with no ships permanently there.  The only communication allowed is to input the standard reports and to report anything outside of the form’s scope to the squad’s immediate supervisor.

Here’s the logic: rotating them out prevents complacency and forces troopers to evaluate each situation with fresh eyes. It would be inefficient to have ships out of circulation simply to be stationed at each outpost. Restricted communication eliminates unnecessary chatter, and ensured that each communication would be important and treated as such.

Here’s the result: Hux is stationed with the rest of EL squad at an outpost a thousand klicks away from any oscillator or main base, with no ship or other transport, and the only contact with any higher officers a form or a restricted comm line, a computer isolated from the network. The planet is going to explode in five days, and there is nothing he can do.

Here are options, considered and abandoned: no ship to steal to assist protecting the oscillator; no one with rank enough to win a meeting with High Command; no way of getting the attention of someone with enough rank.

He could, in theory, go through the comm system, work his way up from officer to officer until he was able to speak to someone who could influence events. He could, in theory, talk to officer after officer, convincing each one that his information was valid and legitimate and should be escalated, that he should be listened to rather than put back in Reconditioning.

He could. There was a point when he would have tried.

But here's the truth: he no longer believes that he would be listened to. He does not think he would be able to progress - the officer would pull his file if they did not already know it, and then refuse to listen to him any further. FN-2187's defection has cast a suspicious light on every Stormtrooper on the base, and his own record would damn his chances.

So here he is once more: waiting for the end and unable to save himself or his Order. Here he is again: powerless and hopeless, a single life unnoticed in the galaxy.

Here's a thought, absent: He has not seen the other members of his squadron since disembarking. Reconditioning had left him in no state to notice their locations or moods: he was able to follow orders when given them, but little else.

(They were able to recondition you properly in the end after all, General.)

 

 

He finds Nova in her bunk first. Nova, alone, which is unusual. He glances around for any trace of Spitz, and then notices that Nova is tracing a pattern over and over on the inside of her arm – a pattern that resolves, suddenly, into figures:  E, L, 3, 7, 7, 7.

Spitz.

Nova looks up at him and she scowls. Her eyes are red, the skin on her face blotchy and damp.

Here’s a realization: she’s been crying.

(Do you know what this means, General? Do you recognize the rituals, kept secret from any officer, passed between squadrons in whispers and looks? Did you even think they would have these things, tiny moments of mourning in between orders?)

"What." Nova snarls, but then she looks at him again and - "Oh, fuck, you just got out of recon, you weren't..."  She trails off, wiping her eyes. Hux sits next to her on the bunk, silent, waiting for her to speak. In the silence, she traces the pattern on her arm again.

"There was an escape." She says, finally, staring at the bunk that should have been Spitz' but showed no sign of being slept in. "While you were in, they'd gotten some - pilot, I think he was, but he escaped with a Tie and...." She rubs at her eyes again. "We were on patrol and got called into help. There was - a beam collapsed. Pinned her legs, did something to her spine. She was..." A huff, aiming for laughter but not reaching it. "Decommissioned."

Here’s a secret: even Hux knows what that means.

“And there was – we’re not supposed to know this, the only reason I do is because I was /there/ - the pilot had help. A trooper. Somebody - defected. I don’t know what squad, I just know it was a Trooper.” She shakes her head, rubbing her wrist.

Here’s the official line, when they’re forced to acknowledge FN-2187: he is a traitor. He has abandoned you, broken the oaths you have all taken. You hate him. You are not like him.

“You know the worst part?” Nova says, a little hysterical, a little breathless. Hux can do nothing but listen, still has no words to offer. “I can’t even hate him. That traitor got Spitz decommed and I’m not even angry at him.”

Hux stares at her, but she’s still staring across the room at Spitz’s empty bunk. “He saw a chance and took it. He got /out/, Sniper.” She looks down, and traces out Spitz’s number again. There is a long silence.

“….Spitz and I talked about it, sometimes.” She doesn’t look up from her tracing. “Leaving, you know? I think everybody does, at least once. Except for you, maybe.” She says, with a tired smirk. “Nothing serious, just - if you could, what would you be? No harm to it.” She breaks to laugh, the noise harsh and hollow. “We both knew it was never going happen. We both knew that I’d never – I’d never be able to fire at another trooper, never be able to stop thinking it was Spitz or Lucky or you or somebody else I knew.“ She lets go of her arm, wipes her face again. “I can’t blame him for being able to do what I couldn’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

Here’s a fact: he’s not sure if she means leaving, or being angry.

(Here’s a secret: both, General.)

Nova glances over at him, finally. She looks – tired, and resigned, in a way she wasn’t before.

“Going report me for reconditioning?” She grips her arm, but her thumb keeps tracing out numbers, letters. “For inappropriate attachment to a comrade, or intent to defect, or something?”

He should. This must be a mistake in the conditioning, an error to be corrected –

(Do you really think so, General? Would any program be enough?)

The program was intended to prevent this – this attachment, this sense of something lost –

(Did you really think it would work, General? Did you think it was /better/ this way? Did you think they would feel no loss if you pretended there was nothing to lose? Did you think treating them like tools would stop them from being /people/?)

Here’s a scrap of detail, half remembered: FN-2187, later known as Finn, defected after a mission to Jakku where one of his squad mates was killed. FN-2187 showed no signs of sedition previous to this.

(Did you not think that was important, General? That the timing of it was irrelevant? Did you think that the corruption had always been hidden in him, inherent, a flaw baked into him and waiting for an opportunity?

Here’s the truth, General: traitors are not born, they are /made/.)

If he were a better Stormtrooper, he would report her, even as he knows it wouldn’t matter. (If you were a better person, you might know how to comfort her.)

Because here’s the truth: no matter what he does here, they will all die in five days. She would not be taken off planet for reconditioning, and neither would he.

“….are you planning on defecting?” He finally says, instead of answering. She snorts a laugh.

“No. What would the point be?”

Hux inclines his head. “Well, then.”

She huffs a breath. They sit in silence, until it’s time to go on patrol.

 

 

 

Only a percentage of the First Order was stationed on Starkiller, albeit a large one. And only a small percentage of those attended the speech for Starkiller’s firing in person. Officers, Stormtroopers of rank Sargent or above and a selection of squadrons, and non-essential technicians; the security risk of this, the most important moment in Starkiller’s history, could not be ignored – nor the catastrophic results of mechanical failure from an inattentive tech.

Stormtrooper squad EL was not attending the speech. That was an honor reserved for squadrons with perfect records – in the wake of FN-2187’s defection, they were taking no chances. Hux does not know if it is his record that has banned them. He is not certain it matters.

The speech will be broadcast in the barracks tonight. But until then, there is only the patrol; snow underfoot and overhead, the wind in the trees and the crackle of breath over the comm, and the sky darkening above.

Here’s a memory: Standing on the platform, the wind on his face and the thunder of his pulse in his ears; the crowd assembled below and the cameras around him; his mind a step removed from the actions, the impact only settling in later, the moment rehearsed so often that the act felt like façade.

In that moment, he had been larger than himself, power and agency wrenched out of the hands of destiny by his own effort (and the efforts of every soul that died for you, General) – he had felt almost high with it, afterwards, with the knowledge that this was the killing blow of the Alliance, that he had paved the way for /Order/ in the galaxy –

(Here’s another memory:  Kai in front of the projector screen, snarling about the /goddamned waste/.)

The sky goes dark, and the ground jerks. Hux pauses in his patrol and looks up. A line of fire splits the sky. (And here’s a secret: Hux does not feel powerful.)

 

 

 

In the sky, faint flashes of plasma fire warm the darkness. X wings and Tie Fighters leave glowing streaks against the sky. Most of the fighting is focused on the other side of the planet. There is nothing they can do from here, and no orders coming through. Hux knows that none will come.              

This is procedure: in the event of an evacuation without sufficient ships to contain all personnel, priority is to be assigned thusly: High Command, Officers, Engineers, Pilots, Technicians, and then Stormtroopers of rank Sargent or above. Stormtroopers of lower ranks are to be left to the ranking officer’s discretion.

Here’s a fact: With FN-2187 (Finn) being responsible for the fall of this base, Hux doesn’t think there’s an officer in the Order who would go out of their way to save a Stormtrooper they didn’t have to.

Here’s another fact: Hux drafted those evacuation procedures himself, based on the scarcity of particular personnel, the cost and time invested in reacquiring and retraining them, and the necessity of each type in a post-evacuation scenario.

Here was his logic: without the officers and Command, the Order could not exist. If Starkiller were in need of an evacuation, then the engineers would be needed to recreate it. Stormtroopers were valuable, but more easily replaced than any other type. The lower ranks did not have specialized training, and were considered largely interchangeable.

Here’s another fact: Hux knows that no one is going to come back for them.

“The evac isn’t going to come, is it?” Hux shakes his head, watching the sky. Nova huffs. “Of course not.”  

“….we’re gonna die, then?” Lucky says, quietly. He pops off his helmet and rubs his eyes. He’s crying, Hux thinks, even though they tried to train that out of them. “Just like this?”

(Not for the good of the Empire, not for treason and not for failure – but because it was easier to let them die. Because they weren’t worth saving. Because when you wrote the evacuation orders you were thinking about efficiency and cost effective procedures, not about the lives that would be lost to each decision. Numbers, not people.

But these are people, General - you’ve seen their faces and you can’t pretend they don’t have them, not anymore.)

“We are,” Hux finally says. “It could take anywhere from three to fifteen minutes for this area to collapse or the planet as a whole to explode.” He glances away from the sky to see Lucky’s tear-streaked face. He looks away again. “However, if you’d rather not wait, my blaster still has a charge.” 

He pulls out his blaster and tosses it, not looking at whether or not Lucky picks it up. He doesn’t care, he thinks, he just doesn’t want to listen to Lucky crying anymore.

(Here’s a secret: you’re lying and you know it, General.)              

(Here’s a memory: the last Order hold out, the blaster fire overhead, the silent comm at your feet; the taste of metal and ozone, bile and blasterfire on your tongue; the knife sharp knowledge that you were going to die, and the only choice left to you was to die on your own terms rather than someone else’s.)

The ground shudders erratically beneath them. Hux watches the sky. Evacuation ships leave streaks of light against the dark sky - Hux watches them and identifies ships and commanding officers and death tolls in his mind.

Somewhere in the sky, there’s a shuttle pushing itself past the unstable atmosphere, rushing in instead of out – somewhere on the planet, Kylo Ren lies bleeding out in the snow and does not expect anyone to come for him.

(Here's a fact: you could have touched him, that day on the evacuation shuttle, could have reached forward and taken that limp, cold hand in your own. Both of you broken open, his body caving in on itself and yours just feeling like it was - you could have touched him, met his eyes for longer than a instant in the echoing silence of the shuttle. You could have touched him, General, just enough to acknowledge that he was there and so were you; two people hurtling through space, both half dead and grieving but, for that one moment at least, not alone in the universe -)

(But here's the truth, General: you could have touched him, but you didn't.)

 

The fourth time General Hux dies, he’s sitting on the snow to keep from stumbling as the ground shudders and cracks beneath him. His weapon in its death throes, consuming all unable to escape, uncaring and selfish.

Nova settles on the ground next to him, her helmet abandoned, just like she did that on those nights when he got out of reconditioning. No words, just – company.

(It is just this: you and I are here, together. We’re trapped, and we both know it, there’s no way out of this for either of us – but here and now we are not alone, and maybe that counts for something.)

“You know,” Hux says, ignoring the cracks in the ground, ignoring Lucky sobbing against a tree with a blaster in his hands, “When the planet explodes, it will turn into a supernova.”

“Really?” Nova glances over at him and he nods. She chuckles, and stares up at the sky. She’s almost smiling – passing through anger and landing somewhere near resignation. “There’s that, at least.”

 

(The fourth time General Hux dies, it is like this: it is the warming air against his skin and the tremors in the ground beneath him. It is the fire flaring up from cracks in the ground as the planet eats itself alive, the weapon turned against itself. It is snow turning into steam, sublimating too quickly to melt.)

(The fourth time he dies, it is like this: Nova leaning against his shoulder, staring at the sky instead of watching the planet around them collapse.)

(It is like this: a crack, and a tilt, and a silence without space for screaming.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tags: depersonalization, dehumanization, disassociation, brief identity confusion, politics, unflattering political comparisons, indoctrination, torture, character death, brainwashing
> 
> In which Hux suffers, the author is not subtle, and everything is sad. Again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, slightly less than two months this time...
> 
> As always, chapter tags and spoiler title in the end notes.

T=-2 “Cavitation bubbles”

 

Hux opens his eyes and – clamps his hands over his ears, curling up, biting his lips to keep from shouting.

Here’s the problem: none of it helps.

Because here’s the truth: the constant – noise, pressure, vibration, /something/ - is /inside/ his head, his heartbeat echoed over itself, something inside of him squirming and thrashing –

“First time outta hyperspace?” The man sitting next to him says, seemingly unaffected. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

This is not a hyperspace drop, Hux has been through a thousand since he was a child, this is /not/ -

Hux stares at the man, hearing –and yet not hearing – the outline of words even though the man’s mouth remains shut; feeling concern-nostalgia-amusement somewhere slightly outside of his own mind-

His first thought, quiet in the rush of everyone else’s emotions: Oh. Oh no.

(Oh General, oh /yes/.)

 

 

 

Here’s a surprise: he can hardly feel the afterburn of dying in Starkiller under the sensory information being poured into his brain. This is not preferable.

Here are descriptions of varying usefulness and accuracy: the Force is a digital overlay on his vision, a thrum of noise he cannot block out, emotions and sensations that he faintly recognizes as coming from somewhere outside of himself. It is somehow all of these things and none of them. Language is an abstraction.

Here’s a thought: no wonder Ren is /insufferable/, if this nonsense is how he sees the universe.

He breathes, in and out, very deliberately. He clenches his fists, pressing the nails in to verify which sensations are his, and glances down at himself.

Observations: the pale skin of a spacer; calloused hands, Order jumpsuit. Order Technician, then. Not without possibility. Hux keeps his breath steady, and tries to focus.

 

 

 

Upon arrival on the Finalizer, he is issued a standard datapad with his room assignment and shift schedule loaded. He is an engineering tech, apparently, low ranking enough that there is no one underneath him. His name is given as Eli.

Here’s a fact: he is still learning to process the intensity of sensory information being poured into his mind. But still he feels a – twist in the Force, a flicker around his datapad. There is an overlap, as if two entities existed in the same space for a fraction of a second.

Here’s a thought, bitter as he watches the flickers fade: well, he’d always figured this nonsense was due to the Force, didn’t he?

He walks away and looks at his datapad, checking the date.

He has four weeks.                                                                           

 

 

 

Hux sets himself on his assigned bed and – breathes, for a long moment. It is quieter here, fewer lives echoing around him.

Here’s an acknowledgement, grudging: no wonder Ren always favored the most out of the way places on the ship. No wonder Ren was foul tempered in crowds, no wonder -

Stop. Pause. Plan. His goal has not changed.

(Hasn’t it, General?)

His options:

  1. Attempt again to interfere in FN-2187’s defection. 
    1. Advantages 
      1. He has access that a Stormtrooper would not be given – there would be little observation of him while he is off duty, and it would be possible to interact with the system in ways he had not been able to previously.
    2. Disadvantages 
      1. He would have fewer excuses to come into contact with Stormtroopers. Any direct action would have to be by chance, or appear so.
      2. It is possible that there are other Stormtroopers that would take the opportunity that FN-2187 did. Focusing his attention on the one may distract him from others.
      3. If it is true that he showed no sign of sedition before action, any attempt to discredit him would not succeed and damage credibility
      4. In a physical confrontation, it is unlikely that Hux would succeed.
      5. Feasibility: low


  1. Prevent the fall of Starkiller mechanically 
    1. Unlikely that he will have access – ship technicians were rarely transferred to Starkiller.
    2. Feasibility: very low, only pursue if given ideal opportunity
  2. Recruit help 
    1. Advantages 
      1. Greater access to resources and more freedom to move.
    2. Disadvantages 
      1. It requires a trustworthy ally of sufficient rank to gain access that he does not have as a tech.
      2. Feasibility: medium low



Here’s an idea: there is one candidate for an ally; someone intelligent and powerful that he knows and understands, whose goals and ideals align with his own.

His approach, then: Approach General Hux as he exists in this iteration and convince him of the information. From there, a better plan can be established. He knows himself (Oh, General) and should be able to convince the other iteration of his validity.

Hers’s a fact: even after Reconditioning and three other lives, Hux believes in himself. His faith in himself is cracked but not yet broken.

(You believe in yourself yet, General. More than in the Force, more than in reality, more than in the Order itself – or maybe you haven’t realized there’s a separation, yet? You are the Face of the Order after all. You believe in General Hux.)

Complication: this discussion will have to take place with the General alone, in a place without live surveillance. The information that would be most effective in convincing him would be highly confidential, and potentially private.

Further complication: technicians do not generally seek out private meetings with the General. If he sought one out, he would have to go secretaries and subordinates, viewed with suspicion at all stops.

Here’s a fact: the higher ranks are intentionally insulated from the lower. It is intended as a security measure, to prevent harm coming to the officers or lower ranks gaining access to sensitive material.

Conclusion: a two pronged plan, then. Approach the General at first natural opportunity, while also maintaining awareness of FN-2187’s defection. As last resort, prevent the confluence of inspiration and opportunity by incapacitating the pilot.

Hux breathes out, and nods. It will do.

 

 

 

His first day starts like this:

He wakes early, the barest scrapes of a plan in his mind. He goes to the mess hall, and winces at the burn of emotion from the crowd.

Observation: it is difficult to parse any single emotion. As he eats, he distinguishes common threads – dissatisfaction with the meal, exhaustion, and something that feels – familiar. It is as familiar as the thrum of an engine core, as his own heartbeat, but he is not sure what it is.

 

 

His assignment comes up in a sector near the bridge. Simple maintenance work, barely above droid work, but necessary. Hux reaches the area and begins to work. However: a pressure, building in his skull, distracting him. It is, he realizes, a shift in the Force, but different in quality from the ones he has experienced so far. Hux pauses his work, turns to the hall, and freezes.

Ren.

Ren is - a cacophony in the Force.

Hux stares at him, frozen, for longer than he should, longer than he notices. Crowds move around him, just another body in the mass, invisible – Ren’s presence is a tangible thing, lurching and jerking back and forth, tangled up on itself – Hux tastes blood in the back of his throat and isn’t sure it’s his, tastes rage and fear darklight burn –

(-Look again General, that’s not all - )

Ren’s attention jerks towards Hux with the instinctual knowledge of being watched – but only for a moment, barely enough time for Hux to hide himself between the shields of a General and the emptiness of a Trooper.

This is procedure: any Force sensitive individual is to be acquired by the Knights of Ren. If they are strong enough they are recruited. Otherwise, they are destroyed. (Like a faulty engine.)

Here’s a question: which option is worse?

No matter – Ren’s attention has already snapped another direction. Hux swallows, wets his lips, and gets back to work. Another tech passing by bumps his shoulder and Hux is reminded, suddenly, of Spitz.

Here’s a secret: he does not have a name for the emotion in his chest at that moment.

“You’re new on board, right?” Hux nods. The tech’s feedback reads friendliness and commiseration and only a little bit of concern. “Stay out of Lord Ren’s way and you’ll probably be fine.” It has the tone of friendly advice, the sort that is never passed among officers. The tech pauses, and then continues, a bit urgently. “…and try not to stare so much. He /hates/ that.”

A response seems appropriate. The tech’s feedback bleeds with concern, with the memory of Ren’s rages taking out anyone in the vicinity regardless of whether or not they were responsible. Self-interest, then. (But not only that, General.)

“Thanks,” Hux finally mutters. Satisfied, the tech moves on.

 

  

                                                                                                                                                                       

Observation: Ren's presence in the Force is unusual. Not just larger, not just active; it is double layered. Two presences in one space.

Potential explanations:

  1. It is merely an oddity of Force users. 
    1. Rebuttal: in which case, his own nature would have been immediately obvious. As he has not been noticed, it must not be universal.
  2. Ren always spoke of killing his former self and becoming someone new. At this point, it is possible that he was not being metaphorical. 
    1. Rebuttal: the presence feels familiar, and Hux never met the boy that Ren used to be.
  3. There is another entity, separate from Ren, which is interacting with him through the Force. 
    1. Here’s a memory: a pervasive sensation crawling through his mind, the smell of smoke and dried bone -



 

Conclusion: Ah. Snoke, then. Snoke has been overly invested in his prize student. Snoke approved any number of tracking devices and monitoring devices on him. Snoke spoke to him, sometimes through holograms and sometimes through the Force. Snoke, it appears, may watch over his shoulder even on the Finalizer.

Meaningless information (is it yet, General?) but information, nonetheless.

 

 

 

Snippets, pushed into his brain against his will whenever he leaves his room:  

A girl – boy? – they aren’t sure, and they think they’re supposed to be sure, they’re supposed to be a boy but that feels wrong in ways that they don’t have words for –

A woman who’s terrified of her genetic test, that it’ll come back that’s she’s broken, that she’s alien somehow, that’s why she feels this way-

Stormtrooper, who dreams of seeing every star in the sky but knows they’ll never get a chance – Nova, he thinks, but no, that doesn’t feel like her–

Here’s a common thought, a line in every script: I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I’m not good enough, I can never be good enough, I’m broken –

Here’s a realization like a punch to the stomach: he’s felt this, he knows this sensation, this is that heartbeat-familiar tone. He knows this, the gutting fear that no matter how hard he works he will never reach what is required of him – the bone deep knowledge that there is something broken and wrong and weak on the inside of him –

Each person passes him by, secretly sure that no one else feels the same way; each person walking alone and unaware of their echoes all around them.

Here's a collection of memories: the training methods of the Academy emphasize ambition and self improvement. Success is its own reward. Praise is given sparingly and in private; flaws are discussed copiously and in public. Competition is mandatory.

Here's another memory: his father, talking about spoiled alliance brats who need praise like vermin pressing a lever for food. (Here's a secret, General: who stood next to him, all of nine years old, and wanted him to be proud of you so much it burned, wanted it even though you already knew you weren't supposed to.)

Here's a realization, a sensation in his chest (That’s relief, General, that's what it is, guilty and weak as it is): this is normal, everyone feels this, everyone is broken -

 (You’re close, General, but not quite. This isn’t normal, it’s just normal /here/.)

 

 

 

Another assignment on the bridge. Hux repairs a console – shorted wires, nothing so dramatic as lightsaber damage this time – and for a brief moment allows himself to enjoy the mechanical work of it.

A memory, unbidden: leaning over a ruined speeder with Kai, tearing out usable piping and trying to get the battery out without destroying it or themselves. It barely had a charge, but someone could use it.

This work is less creative than that. There are expected solutions to each problem. Hux considers approaching the General with an improvement to the process, and gaining his trust that way. Encounters must be natural to avoid suspicion.

(Do you really you would listen to yourself now, General? At the height of your power and confidence, before you were confronted with your own failure? You really think you would listen to a /tech/? You used to sneer when a tech tried to tell you what was wrong with a machine they worked on, didn’t even listen to them. Some of them were wrong but some of them were right, not that you would have known.)

The General walks past. His presence in the Force is controlled, tamped down, with no emotion or sensation leaking out of him. Hux salutes and the General meets his eyes for a second. There is no recognition in them. Hux opens his mouth -

And then, a headache pressing into his awareness, a chaotic blur of noise in the Force. Ren, with horrific timing as usual. Hux lets the moment pass as Ren enters the bridge and the General moves on.

Hux watches Ren watch the General, watches the shape of his emotions and the echoes of thoughts.

Here’s something expected: Ren is /loud/. His Force presence could over power the signatures of the entire bridge.

Here’s something surprising: Ren stares at General Hux and /wants/. Wants to tear him apart. Wants to become more like him. Wants to shatter him and imitate him, wants to hurt him and to –

Even Ren shies away from thinking it, ever conscious of Snoke at his shoulder. But Hux can /taste/ it, the admiration and the jealousy and the –

Here’s a memory, thick and sudden: Ren, sparring against the air in some training room or another. Ren had been /indecent/, shirtless and dripping with sweat; constantly in motion, wild and powerful. Hux had frozen, his hands clenching and releasing, his eyes following a drop of sweat down his bare chest –

Hux had walked away, and had not indulged the memory or the image or the heat thudding on the inside of his head. Hux never mentioned it, and neither did Ren.

(Here’s another memory, General, quiet and secret and rarely considered: the first time you saw his face, mask absent as he left Snoke’s chambers – the first time you met his eyes with nothing in the way and /saw/ him, and knew that you were seen in return, that he could peel you apart, strip you of all of your armor –

Because here’s the truth, General; here’s what scared you both away:  it wasn’t sex, that violent little amusement, but the knowledge that it would never /just/ be sex between the two of you. You knew, even if you didn’t know it, the dangerous obsession tucked behind his eyes and the matching obsession lodged in your throat –

You knew, just like he did, that this would never be anything but a wildfire, anything but all consuming and all destroying – that you would not be satisfied with him unless you touched every inch of his body and spirit and that he would demand the same of you –

It was not sex you shied away from, but /intimacy./)

 

 

 

Here is a shift, unremarkable to outsiders: Hux repairing blaster scorched walls in the Stormtrooper training area. Troopers move past him without notice.

Here is a fact: their minds are as alive as any other. The emotions are dulled, their expression smaller, but they are moving and alive.

Here’s another: they, too, have the sour taste of fear, of insufficiency. It is sharper here, strong enough to taste like salt and adrenaline in his mouth, like the moment he realized that Starkiller was falling -

(It's not demotion that awaits them if they fail, General, it's Reconditioning. They know it. That’s the /point/.)

(Here’s a secret, General: you spend the entire shift watching the Troopers as much as your work. You tell yourself you are looking for FN-2187, and maybe you are – but you are watching for Nova, and for Spitz. You think you should be able to pick them out of a crowd of Stormtroopers, like bright lights in darkness.  But you cannot, seeing not darkness but a multitude of lights, and you do not know why this bothers you.)

 

 

 

Hux knows before even getting close why service has been interrupted to this area. Ren is a black hole, warping the flow of the Force around him. Hux can taste the power in the air a floor away, taste the blood and rage.

Here's an annoyance: at sufficient intensity, it is difficult to distinguish his emotions from Ren's. As he gets closer, the rage and energy grows stronger, until he is gritting his teeth and clenching his fist around his tool box handle.

Pause. Breathe. There are techniques to keep a Force user out of his mind, taught to every officer in the Order. He knows himself, and knows his own mind.

He enters the training room. It is empty of Ren, though the afterburn of his emotion remains. Ren isn't far - in the showers, perhaps - but in the meantime, Hux approaches the deactivated panel in the wall to collect data and begin repairs.

Here's a thought, rueful: at least it's not lightsaber damage. Ren's lack of control of his weapon was appalling. It was unfitting for the Order.

Here’s a memory, long considered irrelevant: Armitage Hux, age 14, in one on one combat with one of his classmates. Armitage Hux, age 14, abandoning the staves they had been assigned at the start of the bout and wrapping his fingers – long, more suited to technical work than combat – around his classmate’s throat. Their instructor didn’t stop him until the other student passed out. This was not just combat training, after all, but strategy and tactics as well, and they knew to use everything possible to their advantage. The other student was reprimanded for not anticipating the attack.

Here is the philosophy the Order used to train its future officers: It is for their own good that they are trained to be suspicious and ruthless and brutal, even with each other. As one stone sharpens another, students are made better by competition and battle with no limitations. Mercy is a disservice to both the victory and the defeated. Mercy is an opportunity to be taken advantage of.

 (Here’s another memory, buried beneath: Elan, age 14, already so angry he could hardly stand to breathe – angry at his father and his rotting empire and his toy soldiers, angry at the Alliance for making him live in the Unknown regions like this, angry at his classmates for /getting in his way/  -

-he could do nothing about his father and the Alliance would have to wait, but his classmate was here, weak and open to attack  -

\- fury was whip crack, a plasma bolt, a snarl half way out of his throat  -

The instructor pulled him back before he could kill the boy – he wasn’t punished for the slip, but he didn’t need to be. He was angry enough at himself. His emotions had overridden his control. Calculated brutality had its place; impulsive violence did not. Nothing without purpose, sublimation of the self to the good of the Order.

Elan, age 14, snarled at no one but himself and swore to be /better/.)

The door to the showers slides open and Hux freezes for a moment. It is unlikely that Ren would attack a technician going about their duty, but not unheard of.

Hux feels Ren's attention brush his back, a blast of hot wind against him. Hux thinks quiet, quiet, reminds himself of the silence of the Reconditioning rooms and the stillness of space. Then he turns, sketches out a salute. It is shaky, and he would never accept it from one of his subordinates, but Ren appreciates a show of fear.

"Lord Ren," he says, forcing a tremble into his voice. He resents it, but he has more important things than his pride right now. "I am repairing the damage to this panel, sir."

Ren's helmeted face tilts, and there's another blast of hot wind against his mind. Ren is curious, he realizes, swearing in his head.  Nothing good can come of this.

Ren turns, his movement sharp and sudden, his cloak swishing behind him as he leaves. Hux breathes out, turns back to his panel, and thinks as he works.  Ren’s attention has snapped aside once more. With any luck, he will be forgotten.  

Here's a thought, sliding in underneath: or he could tell him.

Hux Forces himself to consider the idea seriously. Ren has influence, and has the Force - convincing him of the situation may be even easier. Ren would be able to verify his honesty, and always listened to the Will of the Force, regardless.

Rebuttal: Ren is irrational and unpredictable. Ren is wild and chaotic and only peripherally aligned with the Order. Ren could listen or Ren could cut him down where he stands. Ren may believe him delusional or a spy.

(To prove yourself, you will have to open up your mind to Ren, knowing that he might not believe you. Are you willing to do that, General? Are you willing to risk it?)

Complication: Snoke is ever at Kylo’s shoulder. Snoke would know as soon as Ren does no matter what either of them did. Snoke would demand to see. Snoke would see his own death, presumed to be at Ren’s hands. Snoke would see the survival of the Order without him.

Conclusion: Ren could be an ally. Snoke would never be. Ren can be predicted and managed; Snoke cannot. 

No, that is not a viable option. He will continue with his current plan.

(Here’s a secret, General: you’re almost disappointed.)

 

 

 

Sensations: fear and guilt and bone deep panic, crushing white walls and white floors and –

Hux wakes up, gasping.

Here are facts, cataloged in moments, his eyes jerking from one spot to another: he is in his rooms, he is alone. His face is bare. He is not in Reconditioning. He is not EL-2999.

Here is another fact: his pulse is elevated.  And another: his breath is harsh, too quick. And another: his hands are shaking.

Here’s a response: he clenches his hands in the sheet of his bed. He takes his breaths slower, and slower, wrenching his body back under his control.

Here’s a thought, annoyed and snarling: that hasn’t happened since he was a /child/.

He brushes too-dark hair out of his eyes and glares at his own calloused hands until they stop trembling. His sleep is disturbed, but he will survive. He has lived off of less. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and -

The feeling returns – the guilt, the failure, the quivering hope that maybe if –

A realization, easier now that he’s awake: this is not him. These are not his emotions (Well, not completely at least.)  These are sensations bleeding in the through the Force, from someone else’s mind.

Three floors down and half a km away, someone is being Reconditioned.

(Things don’t stop happening just because you’re not looking at them, General.)

Here’s a thought, oddly urgent: Who is it? Is it someone he knows? Spitz and Nova weren’t in Reconditioning at this point, but this was a different timeline -

(Would it matter if they were Nova or Spitz or Lucky? Would it matter if they /weren’t?/ 

Remember, General: Nova thought about defecting and Sptiz felt too much and Lucky was too relaxed – they all deserved it, for one reason or another, didn’t they? If a thing is wrong then it is wrong, if something is unjust then it is unjust. You wouldn’t decide on something like /favoritism/, would you?

They weren’t special, General, not in the way you think. You don’t get to pick out who matters and who doesn’t, you don’t get to decide who’s a real person and who isn’t. You’ve felt the minds of a hundred, thousand Stormtroopers and every single one of them is thinking and breathing and feeling, /alive/ in a way you can no longer deny. Each one a glowing light no matter how much you tried to smother it.)

Hux sits up in his bed, does equations in his mind to block out the burn of emotions, and does not sleep.

 

 

 

Hux feels it, when Ren returns from Jakku.  His flaring Force presence is unmistakable, even several floors away; he explodes out with rage and frustration and a scrambling sort of panic, the taste of fear that Hux feels in everyone.

Here’s a surprise: even through the super nova of Ren’s mind, Hux can feel Poe Dameron.

The pilot is bright, glowing like a sunrise – Hux picks up snippets from his station three floors above, feels the white burn of emotion – hope worry guilt anger – maybe BB got out – I wonder if he remembers –

Here’s a fact: something about him is different, making him stand out from the noise of the ship. After a moment, Hux identifies it –

Here’s what it is: a lack, something missing – that sour taste of self-hatred that he’s gotten so used to hearing –

Poe Dameron, captured and led to death, does not despair.

Here’s a question: what is different about him? What makes him able to do what no one in the Order can?

(You’ve identified the variable, General, you just won’t admit it yet.)

Evidence: Everyone on the Finalizer experiences this. Dameron, even in this extreme circumstance, does not.

Potential complication: Kylo Ren, raised outside the Order, is still drenched in self hatred.

]Rebuttal: Ren’s mind is so chaotic and ravaged that cause and effect are completely incomprehensible. Outlier; disregard.

Qualifiers: one data point is not proof. Dameron is exceptional in many ways – this may be one of them. The effect may be limited to the Finalizer rather than all Order space.

(Stop delaying, General.)

There are a thousand different “maybes”, and yet, and yet –

Here’s a conclusion, pounding in his veins like a trip hammer pulse: the common factor is not humanity, but the First Order.

Here’s a memory: Kai, sarcastic and angry because it was that or despair –

Here’s another on its heels: Nova, so far past despair she was resigned to death, wanting to leave but seeing no hope for it –

Here’s a conclusion: the Order is –

(The First Order breaks people, General. It breaks them and twists them and makes them /hate/, hate themselves and each other. You’ve lived four lives you /know/ this is true -)

-the Order is not good for the people who live in it.

(Well, General, that’s a start.)

Here’s a follow up, shaking: if the Order is not good for it’s people, if this is not the best, last chance for the Galaxy, then everything he’s done for it -

Hux jerks his mind away. It is worth it. It is all worth it.  In the hands of the right man, it is worth it.

(Is it, General?)

 

 

 

Somewhere, deep in the ship, there is a shift change. Somewhere, the faint light of FN-2187 glows and set itself as crystal.

FN-2187 intends to defect with the pilot. Hux does not intend to let him.

Here's a fact: Hux memorized, to the best of his abilities, the events of FN-2187.  (Here's a secret: he did not memorize the numbers of the Stormtroopers that fell that day.) He knows when FN-2187 retrieved the pilot, and so, he ducks out of his rooms and heads there early.

Defection requires both intent and opportunity. Hux cannot do anything about the first, but he can prevent the second.

Here's a fact: the interrogation rooms are traditionally unmonitored. Holding cells are observed, but only for security purposes. And once all useful information has been extracted from a prisoner, they are moved to less attended areas.

Here's another fact: Poe Dameron has been deemed no longer useful, and is slated for execution.  Therefore, he is in an area with little monitoring against accidents or anything else.

Here's a secret: often, Officers are given the choice of how to eliminate prisoners. Hux never partook himself, but knew of it.

Therefore: it will raise little suspicion if a prisoner - especially a Resistance pilot - dies under unrecorded circumstances.

Hux approaches the interrogation areas confidently and is not stopped. Technicians are near invisible, after all. He reaches the proper floor, and then rubs his eyes against a sudden headache.

Here's an issue: the closer he gets to the interrogation rooms, the more his head hurts; the closer he gets, the more his pulse speeds up. His hands are shaking before he's half way through the hall, and he doesn't - this doesn't make any sense, this can't be happening, there's no reason for this -

-he breathes in, and then out again, but it doesn't help, this isn't -

Here's a realization, barely heard under his thundering pulse: this isn't him. This is an echo, this is an after image, someone else's memories of torture -

(Oh, did you not think of that, General? Did you not realize that these things /linger/? People have suffered and died here for years, hundreds of them, did you think that didn't /matter/?)

Hux closes his eyes, trying to find the quiet place inside of his mind - but that doesn't help, that just reminds him of the never-ending quiet of Reconditioning.

Another breath, and another. They do not help. Hux loses an entire minute, maybe longer, trying to Force himself to get closer, to act, to - to breathe, cursing himself for every moment, for every delay, every /weakness/ -

Here is a secret: he doesn’t know how much time he loses, just that it’s too much. He leans against the wall. He tastes blood. He doesn’t think it’s his.

There is a spike of panic a floor down near the hangers, and above him, the alarm starts to sound.

Hux breathes, and swears, and pushes up from the wall. Too late.

Here’s a thought, bitter: at least he’ll probably have another chance.

 

 

 

Hux stares, oddly numb, at the screen above them. All work is paused to watch the firing. He was fiercely, madly proud of himself in that moment – proud of all he had created, all he was going to achieve from here out. He remembers thinking: this is where everything starts.

Separated from that moment by years and lives and kilometers of distance, Hux stares at the firing and thinks: yes, this is where it started.

He does not feel proud. He does not feel fear. He feels – he does not know what he feels, only the lack of it. Perhaps he has always been thus: this shell of icy procedure wrapped around an empty core, out of which he poured fire and destruction.

(Here’s a secret: after the firing, the Resistance called you General Starkiller, and you only pretended to mind.)

Hux’s badly tuned Force senses twang with the emotions of the ship – awe and respect and fear and pride chatter in the back of his mind. And then, as the red fire streaks deeper into the sky, like the faintest rumbling of an avalanche growing ever closer there is: something else, getting louder.

And louder.

He realizes what it is, in a burst of knowledge: he is feeling death. Thousands, millions, trillions of deaths, layered on each other in an ever increasing cacophony of fear and flashfire suffering and – and /death/, a bubble bursting, the crash of a collapsing vacuum –

Here’s a fact: Hux is rapidly losing himself, the mental noise turning into physical pain as if he is burning alive yet again. He locks his knees to keep from stumbling, bites his lip to keep from screaming.

Here’s a reminder, muttered to himself against the sound all of space screaming in his mind: get it together, you’ve survived worse than this.

(Here’s a fact, becoming ever more unavoidable: no, General, you really haven’t.)

 

 

 

Hux, to his credit, does not start screaming. He does not stumble, he does not faint. He walks in step with the other techs as they disperse, never faltering even though his vision has gone white-black with swirling patterns of pressure. Some things become instinctual, some things are written deep into muscle memory to be called upon when the mind fails – and Hux is an Officer of the First Order, born and whelped in the military. He marches, one foot in front of the other until he is out of the auditorium.

Here’s another instinct, as old as the order to march: don’t let anyone see you break.

He isn’t sure where he ends up, only that it is private and the door locks behind him and he – and he–

He hits the floor on his knees, his hands over his ears, as if that would help, as if the physical is any protection against the Force. There is nothing he can do, _nothing_ : screaming not would fill up the gap in the galaxy that has been torn open (by your hands, General, by your hands, just because it wasn’t your hand on the trigger this time doesn’t mean that it wasn’t once); his lip is bleeding and so is his nose but there’s already so much, no amount of blood will pay this back, he couldn’t possibly die enough times to balance those scales –

Here’s a thought, distant and yet deeply important: Kaja and Naira. Their names were Kaja and Naira, and they had a cat with a metal leg and a crooked tail, and Kaja was a doctor who ran a free clinic and Naira was a lawyer and they got into friendly arguments over the dinner table over intervention in the Outer Rim and took in complete strangers for a meal -

Here’s a fact, belated and yet almost loud enough to fill the silence: they were people and now they’re dead. There is a gap where there was once something.

Again: they were people _._

And again: _they were people._

(And again and again and again, carving itself on the inside of your skull, echoing from one end of the galaxy to the other: this is what you have done, they are people and they died because of you. This was your victory, General, this is was your proudest moment, this is what you have done for the sake of your cause.)

Here’s a secret: this is the first time that Hux consciously thinks of himself as a murderer.

(Here’s another secret, General: it won’t be the last.)

 

 

 

Eventually, the echoing fades. He stands and wipes the blood from his face and his uniform, leaves the storage closet he’d hidden himself in. His mind aches with the silence.

Hux stumbles into an elevator, leaning against the doors as they close. He enters his floor code and slaps his palm against the reader when it prompts for his DNA confirmation.

Here’s a surprise: a harsh mechanical voice, saying he does not have access to that floor.  He blinks, pushes off the door to look. For a moment, the error code makes no sense to him –

Here’s a realization: he had entered the code for the floor of High Command’s rooms. Rooms that, in this life, he has never lived in and has no access to.  Rooms that are still more familiar to him than his childhood homes.

He takes a breath, and then another. The code for the technician’s floor is difficult to remember. He leans back against the door, leans his head back, and enters in the right code.

 

 

He makes it back to his quarters eventually. His mind is numb, like a scar– nerve endings scrapped off but bearing the knowledge that the feeling would return.

He stumbles into bed, lays without undressing. He stares at the ceiling for a long time, and does not sleep.

Here’s the truth: his mind is numb, but the memory of screaming remains.

He sleeps, eventually, and wakes, eventually. Two days until the destruction of Starkiller. Soon, Ren will be returning with the Scavenger girl (her name is Rey, General) and then lose her again.  

Everything is going to move quickly, now.

 

 

 

Work goes on, even in the flush of victory; even with the echoing emptiness of death in his head Hux goes to his shift. He has his orders, and knows how to follow them.

Here’s a fact: Hux felt it, the moment Ren left the ship, felt that tangled cloud of rage and self hatred leave the ship. Without it, the emotions of the rest of the ship are easier to feel.

Here’s another fact: It is not an improvement.

Here’s a thought: he should act. Tell someone. Suggest to an officer that the defection should be treated more seriously, that the oscillator should have extra guards –

Here’s another thought: - and billions of people would already be dead, what are a few thousand more –

Hux shakes his head, forcing that away. It was necessary. It was always necessary (you don’t believe that, not any more, stop pretending you do General). But if the Order falls it will be in vain.

(Here’s a question, General: will it be worth it if the Order survives, continues as it is now? Is the society you want? Can you build a galaxy that deserves to exist out of this?)

Here’s a thought, held to tightly: the General would be convincible. The General would be able to steer the Order to a better path, protect it from destruction. With foreknowledge and force sensitivity, it could be saved.

Here’s another thought, resigned: all of the officers are celebrating somewhere or operating on the bridge. Hux has no way of contacting them, no access to their floors. Unless the General comes across his path, there’s nothing he can do.

(Here’s a secret, General: you’re not sure what you would say to them, now. You’re not sure, if you tried, that the only thing out of your mouth wouldn’t be the names of all the people dead and soon to die.)

 

 

 

Hux sits on his bed and waits. It’s his off shift. All technicians will be called in as soon as the evacuation starts, but not yet. 

Here’s a fact: he feels the moment the battle starts. He feels the spike of alarm from the ship around him. He feels the first pilot that dies, and the cascade of violence that follows. He feels Ren, the corona of rage and desperation and self hatred that explodes out of him at the oscillator, and then the moment he falls to the scavenger.

Here’s a memory: Kylo Ren, bleeding out in the snow. Kylo Ren, dying and letting it happen, all fight dripping out of him even as he was bound down onto a med cart and rushed away from a dying planet – Hux had stared down at him, attention caught for a moment even as Starkiller crumbled beneath them on Kylo Ren, bleeding out and sobbing and making no effort to stop either. Pathetic, Hux had thought, disgusted.

(That’s not how you felt, General, at least not entirely.)

Here’s another memory: Nova, leaning against his shoulder, long past the point of tears. Nova, accepting her death and knowing that no one was going to come for them, watching the streaks of ships in the sky escaping without them.

Here’s another fact: he doesn’t feel Nova die, individually. The deaths come in waves, as one section or another of the planet collapses. He doesn’t feel Nova die.

(Here’s a secret: you wanted to, wanted to be with her in some way in that moment, and you don’t even know why.)

Hux sits on his bed, leans against the wall, and lets the death he caused tear through his mind for the second time in three days.

Here’s a secret: this time, he doesn’t fight it.

 

 

 

Hux stares at the ceiling, and then at the wall.

Somewhere in the depths of the Finalizer, Ren floats in a bacta tank, sedated and struggling yet against whatever lies waiting inside of his head. Perhaps it is Snoke. Perhaps not.

(Here’s a memory: You visited him, General. At least once a night you walked the med bay, checking on other injured and also on him. You stared at him for longer than you admitted, at his scowl and the gaping wound in his side. You pretended to feel nothing more than annoyance.

Here’s the truth: you felt a lot of things, that night.)

Soon, he will be delivered to Snoke, barely healed and barely sane. He will not return.

Somewhere in the expanding corona of gas and plasma that used to be his weapon, there is a group of atoms too destroyed to be called ash. This group of atoms used to be called Nova, and Lucky, and thousands of other lives.

They float amongst billions and trillions of other atoms, lives that will never again be, cosmic noise where there was once a pattern.  Disorder, instead of organization.

Hux stares blankly at his own hands, and then across the room at his flashing datapad. All technicians have been ordered into double shifts to repair the fleet. His own shift started at least an hour ago. He has not left his room.

Here’s a fact: he did not consciously decide to ignore his orders. Later, perhaps, that will alarm him.  Later, perhaps, he will feel something beyond the echoing emptiness inside of his mind where there used to be noise.  His sense of the Force is a burned out microphone, an overloaded sensor barely registering anything beyond the afterimage of a supernova. Later, perhaps.

Here’s a certainty, bubbling in the back of his throat like laughter: it won’t be long. Three times, now, since the first, surely enough of a pattern to make a prediction from – he did not die from the firing of Starkiller and he did not die in its pyre, but he will die soon.

Perhaps the death of Starkiller would always be his, and he merely delayed it at first. Perhaps whatever tipping point of history, the moment at which he could wrench his life’s work away from the void, was never truly in his grasp after all. Perhaps there is no grand purpose to his repeated lives but mockery. Perhaps there was no purpose at all.

Here’s a sensation: someone approaching, their minds guarded but their presence not. They stop in front of his door.

Hux opens the door before they knock. There is an officer there with an unreadable expression, and a Stormtrooper with weapon drawn.

Here’s a fact: Hux recognizes the insignia on their shoulders.  Internal Investigation.

“Ah.”

Here’s another fact: He offers a tired smirk, and doesn’t offer a fight.

 

 

 

Here is an image, and he does not know if it is the Force or wishful thinking: Ren, his master slain at his feet, his mind collapsing in on itself, imploding in on the vacuum where Snoke no longer was –

Ren, knowing that he was dying, thinking in that ridiculous wishful way of his that maybe things didn’t have to be this way – looking over all the things they might have been, all of the almosts that stood between them –

\- And with his dying breath and all of that impossible power of his reaching out and twisting –

Here’s a thought, bitter: It’s probably not true.

(Maybe, maybe not. You want it to be true, though, and maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s what matters, right here and now:  that you want to have been his last thought even though he wasn’t yours. Maybe it matters, that wanting.

 You want to matter to him, and maybe that’s enough of a truth for now.)

 

 

 

At first, the interrogation is handled by one of the lower officers. Hux knew her name, once, or at least he thinks so – she has striking green eyes and sharp features, and he feels like he knew her once. She does not smile, but then again, Hux isn’t surprised. She’s been working on him for hours, and he hasn’t cracked. He won’t, if she keeps up the way she’s going. He almost despairs at the quality of the interrogation coming from his own staff – really, he’d gone through worse beatings than this at the Officer’s Academy.

Here’s the standing, as far as he can guess: one broken rib, and one shattered kneecap. All of the fingers of his left hand are broken, and she was starting on the small bones in his palm.

(Here’s a thought, General: not as bad as Reconditioning, though.)

So far he has been accused of: being a spy for the Resistance, lowering the shields on Starkiller personally, planting the explosives in the oscillator personally, being a spy for any number of smaller factions of old Imperials, being a spy for seditious groups, and being an alien shapeshifter. At this point, he suspects they’re simply throwing accusations at him to see what has an effect.

A knock at the door and the officer jerks her head over. Maybe they’re finally going to kill him. The door jolts open, and –

“Leave us, Lt.” General Hux enters, tugging his gloves into place. “I will handle this.”

Here’s a thought: this is not the same. He did not – in his life, he did not -

(Are you certain, General? Are you /sure/? How much do you really remember of those days, just after the destruction of Starkiller?

Here’s a haze of memories: you smoked your entire pack of iported cigarras in the first two days, and then resorted to terrible ration cigarras, one after another – you didn’t sleep, trying to come up with an excuse to Snoke and to yourself –

-there were purges in those days, and there were scapegoats, people who died and died painfully because you needed a show of capability, you needed to remind people of the costs of betrayal –

\- because your entire world had collapsed and with it your power, with it your confidence, because your control had been ripped from your hands and your mind and you were desperate to regain it /somehow/ –

-because you had a chorus in your head, the names of everyone to blame for this, _damn Ren and damn the Scavenger and damn the Traitor and damn the Alliance_ except none of them were in reach, you couldn’t destroy them the way you wanted, and you refused to resort to breaking your ship like you were Ren no matter how thick and viscous the violence pooled in your throat-

Do you really remember the names of everyone who died in those days? Do you even remember the faces? Do you remember who you killed?

Are you /certain/, General?)

Here’s the truth: he’s not certain. He could wrack his memory but it wouldn’t help. There’s no recovering data that was never recorded in the first place.

Because here’s the truth: he hadn’t cared. He’d known who was responsible for the destruction of Starkiller the moment it happened – the only mystery had been the lowered shields, and Phasma had confessed to it the moment she was able and then declared her intent to restore her honor. It didn’t matter who died, just that /someone/ did.

The LT leaves and the door slides shut. The General pulls a cheap rationed cigarra out of a pocket, lights it, takes a long drag of it, and then puts it out on Hux’s shoulder.  It hurts, but hardly more than anything else.

Here’s an option: he could talk. Spill secrets only General Hux would know.  He has wanted this opportunity for this entire life, after all, perhaps this is what he was waiting for. Change the course of history from here on, as little as he could change what came before. Save the Order, or at least gentle its fall.

(Here’s a secret: you are no longer certain that the Order could be saved.)

(Here’s another, deeper secret, treasonous even within your own mind: you are no longer certain the Order should be saved.)

Here’s a rebuttal: The General’s mind is a maelstrom of sparking hatred, all shields lost, logic shorting out, snarling and kicking out at anything that stood in its way. Nothing said now would register to him as anything more than noise. Any attempt to break through would be rejected and punished and likely forgotten afterwards.  The course is set and the event horizon passed.

Here’s the truth, more painful than the cigarra burn on his shoulder: if he had come to face with the truth and the opportunity to save the Order at this point in his life, Hux knows that he would have rejected it completely. Nothing of value could come from a traitor, from someone who could not give their all to the Order and were deemed expendable. They were hardly even /people/.

Hux catches that thought in his mind, looks over it again, and starts to laugh.

(It’s okay Elan, everyone has to face themselves eventually. It’s okay, you’re learning, you’re learning; it hurts and it will hurt more - but swallow it down, it’s a bitter draught but better to swallow than to spit.)

The fifth time he dies, Hux is strapped to an interrogation chair he’s seen from the other angle a hundred times, and laughing through a rough throat because suddenly everything makes sense and nothing matters. He laughs, at the thought he could ever have changed anything; he couldn’t, because the person making the changes was /him/.

“What the hell is so funny?” The General snaps and then backhands him without waiting for an answer. His brain sparks, loudly enough that Hux can hear the shape of words through the pain – mockery and how dare he and – and Hux just laughs harder, even though it hurts and because it hurts, right up to the point where the General snarls and wraps his gloved hands around Hux’s throat.

 

 

(The fifth time General Hux dies, it is like this: it is the rasp of leather around his neck, growing tighter and tighter; it is the pressure in his head building, building, /building/ with every pound of his pulse; it is his vision greying out and a ringing in his ears. )

(The fifth time General Hux dies, it is like this: staring up at his own face and into his own mind and seeing nothing but snarling hatred and quivering tension and a need to feel in control of something, /anything/. )

(It is like this: a squeeze –

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 tags: ptsd, depression, panic attack, flashback, kylux, unresolved emotional tension, emotional trauma, psychological trauma, off screen character death
> 
> Hux Suffers vol. 2: self awareness whether you like it or not.


	5. Chapter 5

T= -1 “alchemist”

Hux hits the ground heaving.

He vomits bile and blood and nothing else. He leans against a wall and clutches at his throat, feeling for bruises that are not there. His mind echoes with silence. His knees ache. So does everywhere else.

Observations: he is not dead. He is not on the Finalizer. He is not injured. The only sensory input he is currently receiving is from his hands and eyes and ears and tongue.

Further observations: the ground is dirty, his own vomit aside. He is in an alley, filled with refuse and broken machinery and the remains of other people being sick.

Useless things.

He starts laughing, and doesn’t stop for the sake of his sore throat.

 

 

 

He stands and stumbles out into a mass of people, phantom bruises on his throat and phantom burns on his legs, his sight blurred and his muscles torn. But no one seems to care about another stumbling bastard in the crowd. He finds another place to crumble, to hyperventilate like he hadn’t in – in –

Here’s a fact: he doesn’t remember the last time he had felt like this. Not without getting drunk first.

Here’s another: He isn’t sure how he ends up in a bar, except that it seem to be a good place to be. He isn’t sure how the credits in his pocket have gotten there, either. It doesn’t seem important.

(Oh, Elan.)

He’s half way through his third drink when someone settles on the chair next to him. Hux glances up at them, and then back down at his drink.

“You’re new here,” they say in a carefully generic outer rim accent. Hux says nothing. His throat still feels raw. “You good for anything?”

His first response: hysterical laughter, strangled back like oxygen.

Here’s what he doesn’t say: I thought I was. I thought I was useful enough to deserve to exist. I thought it would all be worth it. I thought I would be worth it.

Here’s what he doesn’t say: clearly not.

Instead:

“…Machines,” he mutters, mostly into his watered down drink. “Ships.” His throat is raw and the alcohol isn’t helping. He had been praised for his designs, chief engineer before he was General. He had increased efficiency of the Finalizer by 6%. He had been useful, once.

The other hums, looking him over again. Hux doesn’t know what they’re looking for. He also doesn’t care. “Any chance you could fix up the lighting system on my cruiser? Make it worth your while, promise.” Hux raises his eyebrows, and looks down at his drink. The reflection in the liquid doesn’t look like him, not that he knows or cares what he looks like now. The person grins. “I’ll pay for the rest of the bottle, if that’ll do it.”

Here’s a thought: He’s probably about to be murdered.

Here’s another: yes, and?

Hux downs the watered down drink, stands, and gestures for the other to lead the way.

 

 

The person – they don’t offer their name, or ask his – leads him to a beaten up cruiser. Here’s a realization, enough to make him snicker: he recognizes this ship, or at least the make of it. It’s an Order troop carrier, altered for cargo and repainted. Popular in the smuggler’s circuit, though that use is heavily prosecuted by the Order.

The probable-smuggler doesn’t take offense and just gestures to the landing lights, flickering on and off erratically.

Here’s a fact: It’s not hard to fix, really. He knows the ship, knows the problem, and it’s the work of ten minutes to pop open the proper set of panels, clean out the built up dust, and reaffix the cables. It happened often with this make of ship, especially when regularly flown through asteroid fields.

Here’s a surprise: it’s not bad, really. Working with machines again, making something work that didn’t before. Machines make sense, and he doesn’t have to think about it. Nothing involved but motor memory.

Here’s a memory, intense enough to make him pause: Kai wiping grease off of their hands, grinning in satisfaction at getting an ancient generator working again.

Here’s a secret: for the first time, Hux remembers Kai offering a space on their ship, a chance to travel with them. (For the first time, General, you wonder what would have happened if you had said yes. Left the order, left the structure and goals, left the meaning that had been determined for you.)

Then he shakes his head, hops down from the ship’s chassis, and stares at the smuggler expectantly. The smuggler raises neon green eyebrows and holds out the bottle of alcohol.

Hux grabs it, pulls of the cap, and drinks until he doesn’t feel the burn again.

“You’re pretty handy, eh?” Hux ignores them, and takes another drink. “What’d you feel about comin’ with us on our next run? Could use someone who knows how to fix this thing up around.” Hux stares at them. Their grin returns. “I know where to get better booze than that, to start.”

It really is terrible alcohol. Hux nods, and empties the bottle.

 

 

 

Here is a morning, half registered in a hungover haze: Hux collects his rations for the day and a cup of some of the worst caff he's ever had, and starts to retreat to his room for breakfast. He still wakes according to shipboard time.

"Hey, you." The captain says from across the mess table. "You're the new guy, then?" Hux pauses, and nods. The captain brushes neon blue hair away from their face. The ship only has a few people on it; the captain, the person who first pulled Hux on, who he now thinks is the first mate, and a few droids. "You gotta name?"

Here's a thought: Elan.

Here's another: EL-2999

And another: Eli

Here's another, sarcastic: General Hux.

Here's a response: a shrug, apathetic. He's not sure what the correct answer is. (It's all of them, and none of them, it's the space between names and the overlaps. It’s up to you to decide, and you have no idea how, do you?) He is sure that it doesn't matter. The captain watches him expectantly, but Hux just raises his caff in a mock salute, and leaves the mess.

 

 

 

Hux snaps awake in an instant.

His skin is – he heaves in a breath, and another, and they don’t help –

-he swings out of his bunk, checks the nearest bottle – empty – and then stumbles towards the mess hall.

Here’s the problem: he feels like he’s burning alive. He feels like his guts are being eaten away by plasma, he feels gloved hands tightening around his throat –

Here’s the solution: find a bottle of something that’ll numb his nerves, work until he’s tired enough to pass out. It’s worked before. The engine was slow starting up, he can – he might be able to -

Here’s the problem: his hands are shaking. His hands are shaking and he’s so fucking useless he can’t even make them stop, can’t make his breath steady, can’t –

Here’s a thought, slightly hysterical: Brendol always said he’d be good for nothing, didn’t he.

(So what? So what if you were made wrong, born a fuck up and fit only for failure? You didn’t let that stop you before, did you? Since when were you going to let him be right about you?)

Hux clenches his hands until his knuckles ache, and lets go with a exhale. He pushes up from the wall and grabs a new bottle of alcohol.

It doesn’t help his mind, but it steadies his hands. That will have to do.

 

 

 

Chatter, from the mess hall as Hux approaches:

“So, what’s your bet on the new guy? Trooper run away?”

A snort from the first mate. “Na, not with that accent. Officer’s kid, at least. ”

“What, you’ve heard him /talk/?” The captain laughs, easy and casual. They are close to each other, he thinks. They touch easily and without fanfare, operate like a familiar squad. Friends, or siblings, or something between. Like Spitz and Nova ~~are~~ were. “I’ve gotten some pretty solid glares from ‘im, but….”

Hux’s fingers twitch. He turns back, and does not get any breakfast that day.

 

 

 

Another night, another nightmare. He stumbles out of his bunk to the mess, his sight bleary. He slumps at the table, his head in his hands for a long moment. He’d expected it, but expecting it rarely helps.

They – the smugglers and himself - were nearly clipped by an Order patrol today. Nearly taken in for questioning, for Processing.

Here’s a memory, distant: General Hux on the bridge of the Finalizer in the middle of a firefight, his pulse as steady as the ship beneath his feet.

Here’s a memory, recent: Hux in the engine room, trying not to listen to the Order over the comms, trying to breathe through the snarl of tension in his throat, trying to remember what it felt like to face every situation like he owned it, the certainty that he had all the power in the galaxy and deserved to hold it.

Tonight, Hux dreamed of Reconditioning, white walls and white floors and no pride left to keep him from begging. Tonight, he dreamed of Kai trying to talk his way out of an Order border patrol, of Nova being brave enough to try to escape and failing. He dreamed of Ren, eyes bleeding and mouth smiling and his own sword through his chest.

A mug of caff slides in front of him. He jerks away from it, and looks up.

The first mate gestures with one hand and raises electric green eyebrows. Then, they sit down next to him with their own cup.

Hux stares at the drink, and then at the smuggler casually drinking their own caff. It is an offer, even he can recognize.

A memory, so thick and sudden he can’t breathe: Nova, late at night, no words and no expectations, only company like two ships passing in the depths of space.

Hux jolts to his feet and walks back to his bunk.

Here’s a secret: it doesn’t help.

(But then again, you didn’t expect it to, did you?)

 

 

 

He leaves that crew at the next trading station. He disappears without a word, collecting his scarce belongings and pay and wandering the market until he sees a ship he’s familiar with that’s looking for a mechanic.

Here’s a justification: He doesn’t want people to get too curious about him. He has no patience for questions about where he came from or why.

(Here’s a rebuttal: you’re leaving because the captain is starting to look at you with more concern than anything else, the first mate has been waiting for you in the kitchen when you wake up from nightmares every night this week. You’re leaving, because you think you’ve learned their names, now–

You’re leaving, Elan, because they’re starting to become people to you, and you’re starting to wonder where they came from, why they chose this life – why the captain has that scar on their shoulder, what accent they speak with –

It’s too much to tolerate, too much and too close, and you don’t think you can stand to know them, or for them to know you.

Funny. Once, all you wanted was to be seen.)

 

 

 

Here is a fact: all spaceports are meeting grounds, places of gossip where information was traded more often than labor. Messengers and spies and salespeople and chatterers.

Here is the effect: walking through a spaceport is walking through a storm of noise, every block a dozen more languages he hardly recognizes and a hundred more conversations.

Here’s the effect: Hux slips through the crowds and with every step snippets of conversations pour into his awareness. It is unceasing, as impossible to block out as the Force, and just as damning.

Here are snippets, each one a difference voice:

"Have you heard about the attack on-"

"Did you hear the Order embargo is still -"

"I'm getting medical supplies in, do you want to come, it’s risky-"

Here is a fact: Hux is still listening. He cannot stop. He cannot stop listening, he cannot stop observing, collecting data, trying to assemble all of the facts into a meaningful pattern –

But here’s the truth: he already knows what he’ll get at the end.

He thought, once, that the power of the Order would be safe in the right hands.

(Really, General? Whose hands are those? Surely not yours – you still feel the pressure against your throat when you swallow too hard, still dream about the irrational fury and selfishness in your own mind.)

Here is a fact: He willingly and unforced gave the order to destroy five inhabited planets. He killed trillions of people, wiped out entire societies and ecosystems, and devastated the galactic economy for an untold amount of time. He developed the weapon to do it and fired it.

Here is another fact: He personally developed the procedures for Reconditioning and enforced their use.

And another: He led numerous invasion forces on many planets in the Outer Rim, and subjected them all to Order rule.

And another: He tortured dozens of people in the aftermath of Starkiller, knowing that they were innocent of any crime.

Here is another fact: in this timeline, he personally does not do any of these things. They occur completely without his influence.

And yet: he still did them. Time restarts, the events themselves have erased and yet, and yet.

The fact that he will not press the button this time does not mean he did not once; the fact that there is another General Hux doing those things does not erase the fact that the one doing them was once him. The results of his choices are gone but he still made the choice; this is indelible.

The things were not done by him, but he is still the person who did them.

Hux sits at the bar, drinks his watered down alcohol, and listens to the chatter of the Order’s wrongs swell around him.

Here’s a secret: it almost feels like drowning.

 

 

 

Here’s the secret: Hux would have been able to bear any stains on his soul and carry any number of corpses if he knew it would be worth it. He would willingly commit any sin and know it a sin if he thought he would be able to make a new world out of it, a better and safer galaxy. He would be the destroyer of history to prepare for a new architect.

He would, if only he knew it would be worth it.

Here’s the secret: he would, if /only/ –

(If only, General, if only. If only you still believed, if only you still thought the world you helped build was one worth living in. If only you hadn’t seen the rot in the foundation, you could still believe you were on solid ground.)

 

 

 

Here’s a routine: Hux drifts from crew to crew, working on whatever ships he’s familiar with or can learn. He drifts, without direction, without orders. He survives out of habit, out of a morbid curiosity at what the Force will do to him this time. He is – tired, more tired than he has ever been, something no amount of sleep or alcohol fixes.

Here’s the truth: his cause has been ripped from him by fire and leather gloves. He does not know how to live without it. He does not –

(You were purpose built, General. You were trained for victory and nothing else – not like a trooper, no, but the Order twisted all in its grasp and left no one unscarred. You had more space than the others, but never /enough/.)

He has nothing better to do, so he drinks his pay and does not talk.

Instead: he listens. He watches. He drinks in the evidence of all his sins with every bottle of alcohol.

It’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough.

He drinks it down anyway.

 

 

He’s not sure where they’ve stopped this time. Some Outer Rim dust ball, not quite Order space, not quite anything else. Lawless and godless, but it still has a bar, and that’s enough.  
They’ll find him when it’s time to leave. Or they won’t. Hux doesn’t care. They’ve been getting too curious, anyway. He’ll leave them at the next spaceport, or maybe this one.

Hux is deep in an alcoholic haze, and determined to stay there, when someone slumps into the chair next to him.

He registers, first, the slump of shoulders and thinks through the haze that oh, Ren has come for him, this must be how he dies this time. Then the lack of robes and the ash grey hair work their way through the fog in his mind, and Hux has just enough sobriety left to try to muffle his laughter.

It doesn’t work, and Han Solo glowers at him over his own drink, and that expression is so familiar that Hux has to laugh again. He wonders if Ren knew the similarity – how could he not? Then he wonders if Solo knows, and if he should tell him, and that is ridiculous enough to make him want to laugh even more.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up you drunk bastard," Solo grumbled, half into his own drink. "Look, your pilot said you know ships. I'm lookin' for a YT class, Corelian. Seen anything like that around here?"

The Millennium Falcon, almost as famous as its pilot. Hux smothers another laugh. He could reply no, could say yes. He could tell Solo about Jakku - have tell him about Kylo Ren.

Instead:

"Is that all you're looking for?" Hux smiles, drunk and joyless. "Are you sure it's worth the effort?"

Solo snorts, and that sound is almost familiar. Kylo Ren would never do something so domestic and /normal/ as snort, but if he did, Hux thinks, it would sound rather like that.

Here’s a secret: the thought is almost fond.

"I'm lookin' for what I'm lookin' for. Have you seen it or not?"

Hux takes another drink. He could tell a dozen things and ask another dozen. But they are both men trapped by fate. Nothing he could say would matter.

(Since when did you believe in /fate/, General? Since when did you give up? You have always been the one snarling a challenge at the galaxy, daring it to face you on your terms – you bent physics to your will and swallowed a star.)

Bored, Hux takes another drink and catches the bartender’s eye. He spends enough time staring at doomed men in the mirror, he has no desire to do it now. He’ll wallow in his own misery if he likes, but he won’t bother with anyone else’s

“So, what are you running from?” Hux jerks up from his drink in surprise. He looks over. Han Solo is still there, and Hux does not know why. Han smirks, and oh, that expression hurts somehow. (Here’s the reason, Elan: you can’t help but picture Ren, smirking like that, not that he ever would – but what if he did, and the sheer possibility aches in you.) “What’s hunting you?”

Here are some answers: Nothing. Everything. The ghosts of people not yet dead. Himself.

Here’s what he says, taking a drink: “None of your business.”

“Hey, suit yourself.”

Hux stands and leaves the bar, abandoning his drink and goes to drink himself to death in private.

 

 

 

Here’s an excuse, mumbled to himself in the corner of a ship, heard only by the hum of the engine and his bottle: It was worth it. It was worth it. I – I thought that it would be worth it.

(Was it? Would anything be worth it? What kind of galaxy could you build, General Hux, if your raw materials were corpses and fear? Could the Order be anything but what it is, if you made it out of what you did?

What kind of future do you want to build, General?)

Here’s the question: does it even matter, now? He is doomed, he is damned, and he has made his choices.

 

 

 

"Hey, you." Hux glances up from his current bottle at one of the others on the ship he's on. Either something needs fixing or they're going to toss him out. "Next stop's coming up, and the Captain's giving us a few hours to relax at the bar, so here's your pay."

Ah. Yes. Money. While they usually pay him in board and alcohol, occasionally he is given credits, normally shoved in a pocket and forgotten about until the next bar.

Hux takes the chips with a nod, and then goes back to his bottle. The alcohol doesn't help much, really, and never has, but he takes another swig anyway.

Another hour, and they land. Hux doesn't pay attention to any announcements, and ignores the others as he disembarks.

Here's a realization: he knows this place. He's seen photos, read mission reports, analyzed every angle. He recognizes the plant life, the ancient brickwork and the tangled lines of flags.

Here's another, bitter and deeply hilarious, enough to set him laughing again: now he's almost /used/ to the Force's sense of humor.

 

 

 

“You know, I generally don’t judge people’s choices, but I’d rather you not drink yourself to death in my bar.” The owner says, sliding into the chair across from him instead of refilling his glass.

Hux snorts, the ridiculousness of that statement deeply hilarious: concern over his potential death when he has died so many times already; concern over a stranger; claiming that she wouldn’t judge his choices when she didn’t know what they were. He nearly laughs at her, but refrains with effort.

“I’m not going to die from /drink/, I assure you.” The woman raises her eyebrows at him. Hux realizes a moment later that his phrasing probably didn’t reassure her much. “You have nothing to worry about from me.”

The owner – Maz, he thinks – doesn’t move, so Hux ignores her in favor of his drink only to find it empty. He looks up, trying to calculate his chances of getting another one without getting kicked out.

“You know, I’ve lived a long time,” she says instead of doing her job and getting him more alcohol. “After a while, you start to see the same eyes in different people.” She hums, and when she looks at him he feels Seen. “Not sure where I’ve seen yours before, though. Where’ve you been?”

Hux stares at her, seized by the impossible urge to tell her the truth. He is tired, even more tired than he was even when he met Solo. He is tired: of feeling, of trying not to feel, of thinking and trying not to think. He could tell her, he thinks, every ridiculous part of it – every moment of torture, of weakness, the /doubt/ so thick he feels it even through the alcohol he’s poured on top of it.

Here’s a thought, belated: he really is drunk.

Here’s a realization, alarming: he still wants to tell her.

Here’s a justification, if needed: tomorrow there will be Rey and Ren and Hux will almost certainly die and then none of this will matter. This won’t have happened, so why not?

Here’s the rebuttal: he will still remember it; even if the choice is erased he will still be the person who made the choice.

(Here’s the thing: everything has a consequence, every action causes a reaction; every choice matters even if only to the person who makes it. We are all alchemists of the self, remaking ourselves with every decision. You cannot walk out of a crossroad as the same person who walked in.)

(Now here’s the question, General: do you want to be the same person?)

Maz watches him, something unsettlingly like compassion hidden in her goggled eyes.

“If you wanna tell me,” Maz says, “I’ll listen.”

Hux swallows. The crossroad looms.

“You won’t believe me,” he says, not stepping forwards to the choice, but not stepping away either.

The woman smiles. “I might, I might not. Either way, do you wanna tell?”

Here’s a response: No, I do not

(Here’s another one, Elan: Yes.)

“What would you do,” he says, staring down at the smudges of liquid his drinks have left on the table, “if you started to doubt everything you’d ever known? If your reasons turned out to be wrong, and the things you thought were justified turned out not to be?”

Because that’s what matters, really – more than the torture, more than the potentially never ending circle of lives he’s trapped in, what is breaking him and has broken him is the doubt: that his actions were justified, that it would all be worth it in the end. That the power he wielded was truly for the good of the galaxy at all, that he were anything more than a butcher.

(Power in good hands, General – but if not your hands, then whose? Would anyone’s hands be good enough?)

“Well,” and at some point a mug of water has appeared on the table between them. Hux glowers at it. “That depends on what I did for those bad reasons.”

Hux smiles, slow and dark and sarcastic. Here’s a secret: his smile has not changed through his lives. “Assume it would be considered unforgivable if not justified, and possibly even if it were.”

Here’s a memory: Kylo Ren, half-drugged out of his mind as they fled the wreckage of Starkiller, flopping at arm out to reach for Hux.

“You… smell like death,” he slurred, his voice trembling with awe. Hux sneered. They were both covered in blood. “Since the firing, in the Force, you-”

Kylo dropped off again, leaving Hux to wonder whether or not the Knight had meant it as a compliment.

“Hmm.” Maz pours the water into Hux’s glass. He glares at it but he is thirsty, and so he takes a sip and chases the left over taste of alcohol. “And it’s irreversible.” She peers at him and he is Seen. “Is it?”

“It’s always played out the same way,” he mutters carelessly into his drink, “It may well be.”

Maz narrows her eyes again and suddenly Hux feels the Force slide around him. There’s an answer, he supposes, and wonders what she’s looking for.

“Well. I’d thought there was something strange about you.” Hux is just sober enough to brace for the question. “How many lives have you had to try in, so far?”

Here’s an answer: what are you talking about?

Here’s another:

“…Six. Well, five, I suppose.”

He can’t believe he’s saying this. He feels numb. He feels faint. He feels reality wavering around him, but he keeps talking. He’s on the crossroad, now, and even if he stepped back off the dirt of that choice would cling to him.

“I died,” he says, staring at his own reflection in those goggles, at the reflection of the face he’s been forced into this time. “And then I woke up in a city I would later destroy, and was killed in my own attack. Again, I woke up and again, was killed by the things I had built.” He swallows down anything more. He could go into detail – he could describe what it feels like to burn to death in an instant, the precise sensation of leather closing around his throat. But he’s not sure it matters, not right now.

Maz laughs at him. Hux jerks back, offended.

“No, no, I believe you.” She gestures with the mug. “There are some things I can tell.”

(Here’s another secret, Elan: you’re almost relieved.)

“So, it appears you’re being taught a lesson,” Maz says, still far too cheerful. “Have you learned it?”

Hux gapes at her. He’s still drunk, obviously, or else he would have had a quicker reaction.

(Here’s a secret: that’s not why, Elan.)

“What in blazing hell am I supposed to be learning?” He’s still drunk. He must be drunk. He never lets himself feel this much unless he’s drunk. (Here’s a secret: that’s true and it isn’t.) “What am I supposed to learn from – torture and death and…”

He trails off. Maz is still smiling, but gentler now.

“You already know, I think. That’s why you’re doubting.”

He says nothing, not even a denial. She reaches over the table and pats his arm, and then slides out of the chair.

 

 

 

Hux watches from his table in the corner as Han Solo shuffles into the bar with his charges. He watches, wondering if the smuggler will recognize him from earlier. He watches, for any new hint of the man Ben Organa Solo might have become in the man. But Han Solo doesn't look his way, and if there is any other hint of his son both men have buried it.  
Hux watches ~~The Traitor~~ Finn and ~~The Scavenger~~ Rey, and tells himself it's because there's nothing else going on, but here's the secret: even he knows he's lying.

(Here’s what you never considered before now, General, here’s the thought you can’t believe is new to you: they must have had their reasons for tearing the Order apart. They are not just agents of chaos, not just monsters bent on the destruction of everything you built. They are people, and people have reasons for what they do.

You may not agree with their reasons, but they must have /had/ them. You just don’t know what they are. Can you figure them out, General?)

He can't hear the discussion from here. But he watches, sees them talk, close and intense -

\- and here's a surprise: Finn leaves. He walks away, barely looking back to see Rey's heartbroken face.

Hux stares at him. Finn was Rey's most loyal champion, her healer, her love; always at her side and to her aid.

And here he is, leaving her behind. Hux can hear him bargaining passage on one of the smuggling ships, much in the way Hux had.

It - does not make any sense. Has his presence changed things? He has not interacted with them, unless for Solo - but could that have been enough -

Here's a thought, less joyful than it would have been, before: maybe he finally saved the Order after all.

(Keep watching, Elan.)

Hux stands, abandoning his water and following Finn out one of the many doors of this place. Curiosity, he justifies to himself, trying to understand an unexpected data point.

Here’s a thought: it’s almost time, anyway.

 

 

 

At this point in space, the plasma beam is passing through hyperspace tunnels to its final destination. The only indication of its passing is a rippling in the sky.

Hux watches for it, anyway.

A moment later: visible fire, and a shockwave erupts across the sky.

Here’s a fact: Hux is not currently Force sensitive. He cannot feel the life around him, even in this lush place; he cannot feel the death of billions on the other side of the galaxy.

Here’s another fact: he still remembers what it feels like. The memory echoes in his throat, reverberates in his lungs, weakens his knees until he slides to the ground against a stone pillar.

Hux presses his hands over his eyes, and does not move.

Maz finds him there, minutes or an hour later. The woman is moving slowly, as if in pain. Force sensitive, he thinks, and he thinks he might be feeling regret.

“….That was you, then?”

Hux nods into his hands, and does not look up.

But before she can disappear into the bar again, Hux -

–begins to speak:

“Wait.” Maz stops moving. “Within the next two hours the First Order is going to attack. The bar will be destroyed.” His voice is flat, mechanical. “You should…” He waves a hand vaguely. “Be ready.”

He doesn’t know what he’s suggesting. He doesn’t know why.

(Oh, Elan.)

A hand lands on his arm, oddly gentle. Hux pulls his head up, but doesn’t look back. Another pat, and Maz is gone.

 

 

 

Ahead of him, Finn stares at the sky. Hux watches him, and does not understand the expression on his face. Finn looks back at the bar, and then at the ship he was about to board. He stares down at the ground for a moment – no, he is not staring at the ground, but at the inside of his own wrist. Almost absently, Finn wraps his other hand around, tracing out a pattern of letters and numbers on the inside of his arm.

(You remember what that means, don’t you Elan?)

Hux thinks: oh.

And then -

\- Finn comes /back/.

 

 

 

(This is the lesson, General: you made your choices – now you can make /new/ ones.)

 

 

 

The sixth time General Hux dies, he is following Finn from instinct, from fascination, back towards the sounds of blasterfire. He watches, as Finn takes a lightsaber and wields it – taking up arms when they were once thrown down, fighting to save instead of to conquer.

An explosion shakes the ground and a huge section of the bar’s ancient brickwork falls to the ground behind him. There is screaming, ozone, and the sound of ships taking off from dead stops, but Hux remains standing in the shadow of the bar. He knows how this is going to end, and walks into the battle without fear.

Nothing awaits him there but death, after all.

(The sixth time General Hux dies, it is like this: it is the smell of charred flesh and ash, it is the taste of ozone and dust on his tongue, the echo of blasterfire in his ears. It is watching Finn run back into battle for the sake of another, running towards what he had before run from.

The sixth time he dies, it is like this: his understanding of the galaxy shattering and reforming again, spinning on an axis he hadn’t known existed.

It is like this: he catches a blaster bolt to the chest, but almost doesn’t notice.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 tags: alcoholism, ptsd, nightmares, oblique references to child abuse, implied finn/rey, suddenly han solo, life changing bar trips with Maz
> 
> In which Hux attempts to spend an entire chapter drunk.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we're finally at the end. Tags are in the end notes, as always.

T=0 “Architecture”

General Hux wakes up in his own bed, in his own quarters, on his own ship. He sits up and stares down at his own hands, and then reaches into his own undershirt to pull out his own dog tags. He stares at them for a moment, reading the text several times, and then lets them drop against his chest. He reaches for a data pad, the movement still habitual after so many lives in other people’s bodies, and turns it on.

He ignores the message alerts, and instead looks at the date. It is nearly two years before the firing of Starkiller, and the destruction of the Hosnian system; over three before his first death.

General Hux is once again himself with all of his power, and he knows that is his last life.

(Have you seen, General? Have you learned? You have been returned to your power and your agency, now what are you going to do?)

 

 

These are his options:

  1. Pass it all off as a delusional fever dream. Inadvisable; ignoring potential intel is risky, and he does not, truly, believe it was a dream: the knowledge is impossible to ignore.
  2. Assume it is something of the Force and approach Kylo Ren and/or Snoke. Inadvisable: Kylo Ren is a brutal interrogator and Snoke even worse, and he would likely not survive the process of extraction – or at least, not in any form recognizable as him. And even if he survived the interrogation, it was unknown if he would be believed or trusted afterwards.
  3. Keep the knowledge to himself and use it to augment his strategy, preventing the worst of the disasters and using his experience for the greater good of the Order. Advisable.
  4. There is not another option.
  5. ~~He could~~
  6. There is not another option.
  7. ~~Except there is.~~



(Have you learned, General Hux? You have suffered and you have seen; you have felt the cruelty of your Order and known its blindness – will you ignore the weight of your crimes yet longer, General? Will you cling to the illusion of your own innocence even now, attempt preserve your own power in the face of what it will cost? Will you claim ignorance and good faith even now?)

(You have been given a chance, General Hux. What are you going to do with it?)

These are his options, revised:

  1. Pretend it never happened. Inadvisable, for previously established reasons.
  2. Inform Kylo Ren and thus Snoke. Inadvisable, for previously reasons established. Also: This is his responsibility.
  3. Keep the knowledge to himself and use it to the benefit of the Order and his career. ~~Advisable~~ Incompatible with other goals.
  4. Defect from the Order. Feasibility is in question – even before Starkiller he is one of the most recognizable members of the First Order. He may be able to sell enough secrets to the Resistance that they would spare him, but doing so would compromise his position and leave him unable to make further moves. Save for last resort.
  5. Function within the stated bounds of the Order while attempting to minimize further harm. Inadvisable, possibly incompatible with other goals; eventually he will be forced to choose. 
    1. Here’s a fact: General Hux has never walked the middle path, never picked measured moderation when decisiveness was available.
  6. Maintain enough of a position within the Order to retain access to resources, while working to prevent and reverse the damage he is responsible for. Inadvisable: incredibly difficult; risks him being killed before he is able to do all that is necessary; features treason immediately rather than just eventually. 
    1. Here’s another fact: General Hux has never backed away from doing what he considered necessary.



 

 

 

 

This is what he decides that night, as he systematically pours out every bottle of alcohol in his quarters; what infuriates him is the complete and utter /waste/.

The Order is an engine that barely runs, a gear train that catches and snarls. It burns up valuable resources for nothing but smoke.  The only recourse is to scrap it, strip out what’s useful and melt down the rest.  

(You do not think of justice, even now, or the rights of sentient creatures; no, nothing so articulate as that.  You think of Kai, brilliant and clever and stifled of all opportunity – think of Nova, broken and despairing, unable to escape her fate – you think of an entire ship, /your/ ship, full of people wary and nervous, so busy being afraid that they never dared to try for more –

Do you know how much energy fear burns up, General? Do you know how much more people can do when they don’t have to spend time watching their backs?

Here’s a question, General: if everyone is suffering, can you call a society successful?

Here’s the answer: well, you’ve figured it out, haven’t you?)

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                           

Here are facts, still sharp at the distance of six lives: The collapse of the Order began from the outside, sectors at the edges of Order territory taking advantage of the weakness after Starkiller to break off. There hadn't been enough manpower or ships to hold them and they knew it. The Order had been forced to let them go, instead preserving their political and economic core of their base. As each sector fled the other sectors grew braver and more demanding, and the Order began to implode.

Here's a thought: the situation is not the same, now - the Order has the manpower and ships to prevent this. The stormtrooper rebellion has not begun. However, the point remains that the sectors were more than willing to leave, and hardly needed to be pushed. Many already have established Resistance cells. They merely needed an opportunity.

So, he will give them one.

 

 

 

 

“Oi, are you the one who’s running rings around the security sensors? I’m impressed, but they’ve been knockin’ on /my/ door for it, and they ain’t happy.”

He’d chosen Epsilon Eridani because he had some familiarity with the black market on planet, but this - Hux hisses out a breath, some emotion he has no name for bubbling in his stomach.  (Here are descriptions: it is sweet, it is warm; it is disbelief and it is relief and it is something near joy. Not that you know what that is, General.)

Here’s a reason: he recognizes that voice.

“I’m the only one doing so that I’m aware of, at least, though I’m intrigued that they think you would be capable of it. Call me Elusion. I may have a business proposition for you.”

A snort on the other side of the comm line, still familiar after five lives. “Sure you do. Call me Kai.”

 

 

 

 

Here’s the truth: it helps, knowing Kai as a person. It helps to be familiar with their methods, to know what deals they would accept and which they would find suspicious.

Perhaps another would be uncomfortable with using knowledge about someone gained without their consent, but Hux is not. Hux will use what tools he has available, as always.

A deal is set: Kai will contact the local rebellion movement, and inform them that there is someone willing to fund them. In return, Kai will receive a cut and mid-level access codes to the local network. Once he has established himself here, it will be easier to get in contact with other rebellion groups.

 

 

Hux spends long hours awake, now, avoiding nightmares that might draw attention and arranging all that must be done. It is easier to focus, now that he has a purpose again. Eventually the strain will be too much – but by then, it won’t matter.  

 

 

 

It is more difficult than he expected, to track down the man he wants for this job. Then again, considering the amount of debt he seems to be dodging, perhaps Hux should have seen this coming.

Nevertheless:

“You what me to do what, now?” Han Solo asks over the comm.

“I need you to go to Jakku and pick up a girl. Details and description can be provided if you accept.”

“Right, okay. And…. Why would I be doing this?”

“Because I know where your ship is.”

 

 

 

 

A report comes up on Hux’s datapad. Internal affairs, high security, and marked urgent.

It reads: Col. Orix convicted of embezzling funds from the Starkiller Project. Money has not been recovered; suspected of funneling funds to the Resistance. Claims innocence but all data trails lead to his accounts.

In the privacy of his office, Hux smirks.

This officer is well known to him. Not only was he greedy and self-serving, but there were rumors even now of his behavior towards the civilians under his purview, and not simply of violence.  

Here is the truth:  this officer would never face justice within the Order. He should, but he paid bribes and took them, deflected blame on those beneath him.  And no one was overly concerned with the fate of a few civilians, so it was never investigated with any sincerity.

Hux replies:

“We have no tolerance for treason. Eliminate him.”

Then he flips through his secure files and picks a new officer to funnel funds through.

 

 

 

 

“Look, Illusion or whatever your name is,” Han snarls over the comm.

“Elusion, yes. Is there a problem?” He types into his text-to-speech program.

“A problem? Let me tell you a problem, you…” Solo breaks to swear under his breath. “I don’t know what you’ve fucking heard about me, but a kidnapper I ain’t.”

Here’s a fact: Hux is very rarely surprised, especially now.

However: this was unexpected.  

“Excuse me?”

“The girl didn’t call for a pick up and sure as hell doesn’t want to go. So fuck you, you can keep the damn ship.”

Hux swears in turn, and takes a moment to carefully compose his reply. “I did not realize.” It grates, almost more than he can bear to admit, but he made a mistake. “I believed that she would be willing to go with you. I was wrong. It was not my intention that you would use force, and I am glad you have not.”

Here’s an image: Rey viciously defending herself against Han Solo. It’s almost amusing.

Sullen silence lingers over the line for a moment. “…Can’t tell if you’re lying through that damn coder.” Solo says. “Well if you really didn’t know, and she doesn’t know you, what the hell were you planning?”

Hux takes a breath, and lets it out. Here’s a fact: falsehoods at this point would do him no favors.

“I have reason to believe that this girl is Force Sensitive.” A muffled swear from the other side of the line. “I would prefer that she not fall into the hands of the knights of Ren. I expected that she would go with you and you would take her to the Resistance.” Hux tips his head back, reorganizing plans. This is workable. Difficult, but workable. “Nevertheless, the deal stands. Your ship is in the nearest marketplace’s shipyards. It is in rough condition but it is flyable.”

“Heh, if half my employers were that nice…” Solo pauses once more, this silence not filled by swearing. “…look, Electric. I’ll – stick around for a bit, all right? Keep an eye on things.” Hux raises his eyebrows again. (Surprised twice in one conversation, Elan? Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.) “Won’t even charge you for it.”

Hux smirks. “Generous of you.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get used to it, Elf.”

Here’s a fact: Solo is almost certainly getting the code name wrong on purpose.

Here’s another fact: Hux almost doesn’t mind. Almost.

“Of course. You are not obligated to contact me, but any updates would be appreciated.”

An annoyed snort, and the call cuts out.

Here’s a surprise: all things considered, Hux does not feel disappointed, and is not yet sure why.

 

 

 

 

“Oi, El.” Kai says at the start of their normal check in. Here’s a secret: the nickname makes Hux almost want to smile.  “Someone’s been asking around about you. Off worlder. Haven’t placed the accent but he ain’t Order born for sure. Want me to tell ‘em anything?”

“Is he known to the resistance groups on planet?”

“Seems so, but they’re bein’ hush hush about it. Can’t get any details.”

The Order hadn’t sent any one to infiltrate Epsilon Eridani but there were any number of interested parties that would want information.

“I see. Thank you for the information. Keep an eye on him, but don’t tell him anything until you can get confirmation on his allegiance. If he’s resistance, yes, anyone else….deal with him.”

“Heh, all righty.”

“On that note, the Order plans to suppress the next protest with violence. The Finalizer will be in the system and Stormtroopers will be deployed.”

“Well, that was fuckin’ inevitable. All righty. Thanks for the heads up, I’ll pass it along.”

 

 

 

 

Epsilon Eridani’s capital city breaks into protests. Fully half the un-enlisted population of the city march on the Order offices, calling for more administrative freedom, lower taxes, less discrimination against non-human species. Hux is almost impressed: the protests all remain peaceful.

Not that it matters. The orders from High Command are clear: this cannot be allowed.  The local commander deploys a squadron of Stormtroopers lent from the Finalizer, with orders to capture the leaders and end the protest with deadly force if necessary.

(Here’s the truth, General: it doesn’t matter if they’re peaceful, because the problem is that they’ve assembled in public at all; when things turn violent, and it will, it won’t matter who fired the first shot.

People are in the open, demanding things of the Order, insisting that they deserve more than the Order has deemed to give them. They have to be put in their place, don’t they? Reconditioned until they behave properly.

All that’s needed now is an excuse, and you know the Order will find one.)

 

 

 

                                                                                                                             

Two hours later, the report comes across Hux’s datapad: the protest became violent and was suppressed by Stormtroopers. It does not list an inciting incident, or why the Stormtroopers were ordered to fire.

28 civilians killed, 17 arrested and held by local authorities. 1 suspected Resistance agent taken onto the Finalizer for questioning.

FN-2003 killed in action. FN-2187 reprimanded for refusing to fire and removing helmet; ordered to report to reconditioning.

Hux narrows his eyes, and swipes to pull up the details on the agent taken onto the Finalizer. No identifying details, but they took a photo –

Ah.

Dameron.

Here’s a question: could the same thing happen here as it did? It is unlikely enough that this confluence of events has been recreated.  Will FN-2187 become Finn once more?

(Here’s an answer: Only one way to find out, General.)

 

 

 

 

Hux is in his quarters, awake long into the normal sleep cycle. He is awake, intentionally, trying to decide what he will do if FN-2187 reports to reconditioning and avoiding the nightmares he knows would come at the thought. He has not come to a conclusion, when the ship wide alert goes up:

The prisoner has escaped and is attempting to steal a fighter. The fighter has broken the tether, repeat, the fighter has broken the tether and has left the docking bay.

In the privacy of his quarters, Hux smiles very slightly. He barks into his Order comm that he’s on his way to the bridge, and then pulls up his secure Elusion profile on his datapad as he walks.

Hux uses his backdoors and his tricks, and connects his text-to-voice program to comm of the tie fighter just as he enters the bridge.

“Hello. This is Elusion. I believe you have been looking for me?”

“What, now?” Dameron swears into Hux’s earpiece as he tries to dodge fire. “Look, appreciate you getting in touch, but we’re a bit busy!”

“I understand. I will do my best to assist you. They will next deploy 25 tie fighters from the leeward side of the ship in a series of x formations. Also, your ship is hyperdrive capable. I am disabling the restrictions now. There is also a tracker program. It will take slightly longer to deactivate. Please try not to die before then. ”

“Uh- right, see the hyperdrive, let me know when the tracker is clear!”

Here’s the fact: It is difficult, more so than he would like to admit, directing the attack in a realistic manner and deactivating the tracker at the same time. Poe is an excellent pilot, but nonetheless, a fighter gets a lucky hit and blows out their shields.

“Any time now would be nice!” Dameron shouts.

“Five seconds. Done. I will be contact once you leave hyperspace. Good luck.”

The comm cuts out, and the ship disappears in a swirl of light.

Hux watches, and then turns to snarl at his crew about how the restrictions on the hyperdrive were lost.

 

 

 

 

"Oi, Earwax. Tie fighter jolted out of hyperspace with a limp wing and crashed nearby."

A second later:

"Uh, so, no idea where the fuck we are but there is a /ton/ of sand, any advice would be appreciated!"

Hux takes in a breath, mentally curses the Force and blesses it at the same time, and lets the breath out again. Answers one message before the other.

"You are on Jakku. If your ship is stable remain with it. If it is not, leave it but do not wander far. I will send assistance."

Then:

"Han. The downed tie fighter is a resistance pilot and a defector from the Order. They are stranded. Are you available for a pick up?"

"Fuck, really? Fine, fine..." 

 

 

 

A bit later, Hux receives a call: "I've got 'em, Eatery." In the background, Hux can hear FN-2187 asking something about how he thought his call sign was Elusion.

"Good. Pilot, are you there?"

"Yeah?" Dameron cuts in.

"There is a man nearby on this planet named Lor San Tekka. He holds -"

"Fuck, you're not joking are you. Okay. Do you have a location?"

"I do. Transmitting now."

"Got it! Shit, if this pans out..."

Hux smirks to himself. "Good. Don't linger. I just received word that Order informants noticed the crash as well. The Order will investigate. Solo, keep your comm active, I will inform you when they are in range."

 

 

 

 

Hux sits across the desk from Phasma. She does not sit. She does not remove her helmet.

Here is a difference:  This is a meeting that never occurred, before. There was no time for it. In the rush of Starkiller, of everything that happened before and after – there was no time for this.

“General. I accept full responsibility for these events.” Phasma begins, saluting. “I should have prevented the actions of FN-2187. I will submit to whatever punishment you deem necessary.”

Hux folds his hands and considers.

Here’s the truth: there are many things he can do at this moment. However, fewer that would maintain his standing in the Order and allow him to do the work that must be done.  (But that’s not the only consideration you have, is it, Elan?)

“Tell me,” he says. “To my understanding you followed procedure fully. What should you have done instead?” Phasma does not immediately respond. Here’s the reason: it is standard practice, especially when talking to the troopers, to act as though the Order as an institution had no flaws. Any deviations were due to Resistance action, or improper conditioning, or a failure on the part of a commander. Even if the procedure was followed correctly and the results were not what were demanded, it was considered best to act as though the procedure was not the problem, to maintain faith in authority.

Hux resists the urge to snarl. Any system that relied on falsifying data could not last. He was a fool for ever believing in it. (Well, maybe not a fool, General – but only maybe.)

“Sir, I.” A word in Phasma’s favor: she is starkly honest and uncompromising.  But she is also loyal, and cannot openly state that the procedures were not enough. Hux continues as if she had not spoken.

“The procedures clearly do not adequately account for all situations. I intend to revise the reconditioning procedures, after a full evaluation of everyone who has been through the program and is currently in it. Discover the flaw in the system, and correct it.”

Phasma stares at him from across the desk. She does not respond. Hux spreads his hands out over the desk.

“Captain, consider it like this. The Order is a machine. When a part breaks and damages the rest of the machine, yes, it is important to remove it and replace it. However, it is also important to understand why it broke in the first place. Was it improper materials, a lack of oversight, or improper application of tools? All of these are possible.” Hux folds his hands once more. “You are correct. This should not have happened. Let us understand fully why it did, so that we may better identify such things in the future.”

The Order was built on flawed principles. The procedures forced people to abandon themselves, all inconvenient emotions and desires stifled until they disappeared, and preached that it was better this way

(Here’s a secret: you think of Ren, just for a moment, and it tastes like bittersweet honey on your tongue.)

Phamsa is silent for a moment longer. Then she salutes, and is gone.

 

 

 

 

Phasma seems to agree with him; the reconditioning process is adjusted, with more thorough evaluations for those disciplined. She takes a personal interest in the project, and sits in on many of the interviews.   

Phasma watches him, when they have occasion to be in meetings together. He feels the weight of her stare, but she asks no questions and he offers no answers.

Another officer, Brigadier General Lor, is convicted of embezzling funds and funding Resistance efforts. She claims innocence, but it does not help her. A show of strength is needed, High Command says. Snoke says nothing

 

 

 

 

“Explain yourselves!”

Hux and Ren kneel in front of Snoke’s throne. Ren is trembling, very faintly. Hux is not.

The report came in barely an hour ago: Skywalker has rejoined the resistance, and brought with him the defected storm trooper and a skilled young woman as his student.  

Hux takes a deep breath, a justification on the tip of his tongue, but before he can say it, Ren is half risen and apologizing, blaming the resistance and himself, saying that he will hunt Skywalker down, this is not a delay –

-and then: silence, Snoke’s presence thick in the room. Ren chokes, and goes down on the floor.

Snoke presses into his mind and Hux does not fight it. He allows it in, throws up annoyance and rage and spite and frustration and does not allow himself to feel anything else, even when it leaves his mind.

Kylo Ren remains on the floor. His shoulders shake, very faintly.

“Leave us, General.”

Hux nods, stands and bows with one hand over his heart. “Yes, my lord.”

Here’s a fact, unavoidable: Kylo Ren will be punished for this perceived failure.

Here’s another fact, equally unavoidable: Hux cannot react. Hux cannot intervene. Hux cannot feel anything on a level that Snoke will be able to perceive beyond frustration, and an eagerness to rip the Resistance apart. Anything else would compromise his own safety and also Ren’s. One of those things is more important than the other.

Hux turns, and does not look at Ren on the floor as he walks out of the chamber.

 

 

 

The tracker on Ren’s belt records that he returns to his rooms four hours later. He is moving slowly. He does not summon a med droid.

Here’s a fact: Hux stares at his tracker for a very long time.

 

 

 

Here’s a thought, barely reassuring: Snoke was going to burn.

Here’s a fact: he cherishes the thought, rolls it around in his mind, spends long minutes indulging it when he should be planning. He thinks about what it would be like to do the deed, even though he knows full well that it’s impractical – he thinks about taking Ren’s saber and running him through, about aiming the full force of Starkiller’s rage at the Citadel, about slowly strangling the life out of the old bastard with his bare hands.

(Then again, perhaps not that, General; you can’t think of it without remembering the sensation of leather gloves around your throat.

Perhaps a better man would pause, here, and think about vengeance in light of what you have experienced. Perhaps a small part of you does think about it, abstractly. About second chances, and what it means to deserve them.

But you are you, for better or worse. You are you, and that means you think of what must be done before anything else, and if nothing else, you know that this must be done.)

 

 

                                                                                                                                                 

 

From the perspective of the Order, it happens overnight. 

A full half of the remaining Stormtrooper core are suddenly missing, ships stolen and entire battalions vanishing. The ships show up days later, sold to smugglers or simply dumped on uninhabited mid-rim planets, carrying Stormtrooper armor but no people.

Hux stares down at the report and frowns. This was expected and planned for, but not so soon.

Here’s a thought: the defections weren’t nearly this organized, last time.

Hux reads over the list of Stormtroopers missing and sees: Captain Phasma: location unknown.

(You never found out what happened to her last time, did you? You assumed that she died, hunting Finn and trying to restore her honor – but you don’t /know/, do you Elan?)

Hux smirks, and sends a message to his contacts with the news.

(Here’s a secret: you’re unable to resist checking, scanning through the designations of missing troopers and squadrons until you find what you’re looking for. And then you stop, that warm soft emotion that you don’t have a name for, glowing in your chest until you think it might burst when you read:

EL squadron:  AWOL, all members. )

 

 

 

 

High Command is in an uproar.

Hux bears the brunt of their rage placidly for the better part of an hour. The defections are from all areas of the Order, with no respect for Commanding Officer or rank. Hux has had no direct control over the program outside of his own ship for the better part of a decade, and he truly had very little to do with this. He answers questions respectfully even if they are shouted at him.

Yes, his ship had the first defector. Yes, he instituted an overhaul of the program in order to prevent more issues. No, it does not seem to have been effective, but as the defections occurred in areas where it had not been instituted it is unlikely to have been the instigating factor.

He is eventually dismissed from the holo meeting, while High Command decides what to do.

 

 

 

 

However, they soon have other priorities.

Epsilon Eridani has declared independence – killed or imprisoned all of the Order officers on planet, and with the assistance of Resistance ships driven out most of the Order space craft from the area. Republic volunteer medical services arrive as soon as they have clearance.

Here’s a factor, one High Command refuses to publicize within the Order: a number of those fighting on Epsilon Eridani are Stormtroopers.  Many squadrons have passed through the sector, it seems, but some of them have stayed to fight.

(Here’s a secret: you ask Kai about the squadrons that had stayed on planet, and pretend that your heart doesn’t ache when you hear that EL squadron signed up with the Resistance.

The Resistance will look after them, Elan, don’t worry.)

Other planets in the sector rumble with protest, but quietly, waiting to see what will happen.

High Command reallocates what troops remain to support the local forces; however the Supreme Leader insists that the Knights focus on Skywalker, and refuses to allow the Finalizer to move from that goal.  Snoke, thankfully, informs High Command of this himself, sparing Hux the explanation.

Here’s a thought, rueful: Snoke’s hyper focus on Skywalker turns out to be useful after all.

 

 

 

 

Late into the night cycle, after Hux has spent 14 hours in planning meetings that he had to forcefully prevent from becoming shouting matches, he receives a ping on his Elusion line from a verified ID.

“Elusion,” He types, knowing it will render as spoken word.

“El, man,” Kai says, their words half slurred. “We’ve fucking done it, man.”

Hux smiles, that strange warmth bubbling in his chest once more. This time, he doesn’t fight it. “You have. Well done.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you, man.” Kai slurs. The faint noise of drunken celebration filters in through the comm. Hux lets the warmth bubble in his chest a moment longer. “Well, okay, maybe, but you sure as fuck helped.”

Hux barks a laugh, unable to help it. “Good. Don’t get too comfortable. The Order still stands.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, calm the fuck down….” A noise, barely audible under the noise of partying, catches Hux’s attention and apparently Kai’s as well. “Oh, baby, did the celebration scare you, I know it’s loud…” Kai trails off into affectionate mumbling. “Fuck, sorry El, one of the medics from the Republic brought her cat along, and the damn thing adopted me. Probably ‘cause we match, don’t we, cyborg kitty? Come on Soph, meow for the nice spy who helped us.”

\- oh. Suddenly the warm bubble in his chest is too much, he cannot breathe through the sheer impossibility of it. Surely it cannot be, that the stranger who opened her home to him and talked of traveling to the Rim would come here, now; surely it is too much.

A faint meow, and Hux closes his eyes. He’s not sure he’s felt this much of whatever this is in his life.

“You there, El?”

“Yes,” he types back, glad that whatever is wrong with his throat won’t come through the generated voice. “Enjoy yourself. Update me as you see fit.”

 

 

 

 

Here’s a fact: very few people in the Order ever had direct contact with Snoke, and only on his schedule. Few have any means of contacting him, and no way of knowing if he has heard.

Snoke has now been silent for months on any matter aside from Skywalker, and High Command is getting nervous.

Here’s a fact: High Command is nervous about a lot of things. Another three planets declared their intent to defect this week.

Here’s another fact: Hux enjoys watching them squirm, even from the other side of a holo call.

“General,” an Admiral says, bristling. “Explain the status of Starkiller. Why is it so far behind schedule?”

“We don’t have the money.” Hux says flatly, and is met silence around the table.

Hux meets their eyes without expression. “We have found numerous officers embezzling funds from the pool of money allocated for this project in the last twelve months. They were caught and punished accordingly, but the damage has been done, Admirals. Many of our supporters are now unwilling to provide us with more money until we as an institution can prove we will use it responsibly. Likewise, the rebellion have drained our resources more than we allocated for. We have supplemented the Stormtrooper core with mercenaries but they too, require pay.

“We have two options, Admirals. We can withdraw from the contested areas and let them go, consolidate our forces, and focus all of our efforts on maintaining our power base and finishing Starkiller close to on schedule.”  Muttering breaks out around the table, which Hux ignores. “Or we can halt work on Starkiller, keep control of our territories, continue to draw revenue from them and continue work when we have the resources to do so. I have submitted projected budgets for either option.”

Here’s the truth: it doesn’t matter, ultimately, which they chose. Hux has plans for either path.  He even has plans for being scapegoated, as unlikely as it is. Snoke has been silent on Order matters for months – but not long enough that any of the Admirals want to risk disposing his favored General.

“…Understood. You are dismissed, General.”

Hux bows with one hand over his heart, and ends the call.

 

 

 

 

Soon, Hux receives a comm message, routed through several different Resistance factions that he has been working with and requesting an audio call. Hux narrows his eyes.

Here’s a response: he agrees, and at the arranged time, the call connects.

“Hello. My name is Leia Organa. I’ve been told I should thank you for helping my pilot. And my brother. As well as a few other things that seem to have your name on it.”

Hux – pauses. Well then.

“You’re welcome.”  It seems only polite.

Here’s the truth: he had planned to get in contact with the Resistance properly, and ideally with Organa. There are things that must be done that can only be done with her help.

Here’s the thing, though: he did not expect her to find him first.

(Surprised, general? Did you picture yourself saving the galaxy all alone, the hidden architect of a new world? Did you think you were the only one that mattered? Oh, General, you should know /better/ by now.)

“I do appreciate all the assistance you’ve given us, and that you want to keep your privacy. However, I would like to come to a more organized arrangement.”  

 “Such as?” Here’s the truth: it’s not a no.

“You would be considered an official agent of the Resistance, and with it you would have access to more direct reporting and more efficient transfer of information.” A pause, and he can hear her smirk, and that is odd enough that he isn’t sure how to respond. “You would probably need to pay fewer bribes, as well.

 “I would, of course, ask that you not do anything that I’ll have to explain to the Senate, but you’ve shown no indication of that so far.” She adds. “And I will give you assignments to find specific information as we need it, on top of sharing relevant data as you have been.”

(So what’ll it be, General? Are you willing to be a resource in someone else’s war, an agent of someone else’s cause?)

Here’s an answer: “….very well, then. What information would you like me to look for first?”  

Here’s a fact: he has information that must go to Organa’s hands, and no one else’s. There are things she must know, or this war cannot be won.

However:  it is too soon to offer it, yet. There is no way he would be believed if he offered it now, so soon into an agreement. It is too valuable, too important to offer up when it might be disbelieved.

Organa says, “There is something more you can tell me now, I think.”

Here’s a fact: Leia Organa survived the Empire and the Reconstruction and the Order, a career politician who has survived crises and scandal. She is, even Hux will grudgingly admit, one of the finest strategic minds in the galaxy.

Here’s another: while she makes little mention of it, Hux would be a fool to think she does not have the touch of the Force on her.

He pauses. “Would you believe me?”

“Possibly. Your information has always been reliable before.”

Hux weighs his options for a moment. One option: deflect, lie, deny – and possibly compromise any future cooperation, something he cannot afford.

Another option:

“I know how to find Snoke.”

“…The Resistance has been looking for that information for a very long time. How would you get it?”

“I can pull the navigational data from the commanders’ flights.” Not precisely true, but believable. Or it should be. He is suddenly not sure, and that lack of certainty alarms him. This is the one thing he cannot plan around, the one thing that must go right. If Organa does not accept this information from him, then… he does not have a second option.

“….if I decide that your information is valuable, I will ask for it.” Not a yes, but not a no either and that will have to be enough. “In the meantime, continue passing along information about defections and troop movements.”

“I will. Elusion out.”

 

 

 

 

Three days later, a message with Organa’s signature code:

“We’ll take the coordinates. Inform us when the fleet is in a position that they will not be able to aid.”

Here’s a fact: the concept of second chances has rolled around in the bottom of his mind like a loose screw, sharp and rattling. Doubt is a strange and uncomfortable thing; he has always buried it under procedures and rules and does not know how to approach it head on.

Here is another fact: he has already made his choice by offering the information to Organa. Snoke will fall, one way or another.

(And yet, it’s still bothering you, isn’t it General? Killing Snoke feels different, doesn’t it, from using corrupt officers to cover your tracks, and you haven’t quite figured out why.

Here’s a hint, if you’re struggling: those officers were corrupt and evil, but their ambition stopped at the edge of the Order. They jockeyed for power and money, callous and uncaring of those beneath them, but nothing more than that. None of them would have dared to swallow a star and rip apart a star system – none of them would have dared to claim Vader’s legacy for their own purposes.

See the comparison, General?

But here’s the truth, General: you did deserve every death you suffered, and you know it; even more does Snoke deserve whatever death will come to him. Here’s the truth: your second chance has come after hard lessons learned and learned again. Perhaps the force will grant him a lesson; perhaps this is a lesson he has squandered. Perhaps it is a secondary concern to you.

Here are the facts: nothing will change until Snoke is no longer in power. Kylo Ren will not be free until Snoke is no longer in power. You want to kill him, but he also needs to die.

 What happens after – well, that’s up to the will of the Force, isn’t it?)  

Here is a solution: Luke Skywalker once held Darth Vader’s fate in his hands, and Leia Organa oversaw the judgement of a hundred Imperial Officers after the fall of the empire. Hux cannot make this judgement  - his skills are all wrong, his instincts honed with a vicious battlefield morality. But perhaps they can.

It is unsatisfying. He would much rather find the solution on his own, rather than depend on someone else’s sense of justice. And yet, it will do. If things are to happen as they must, it will have to do.

 “Understood.” He sends the coordinates but does not terminate the connection. “There also is one other factor, General.”

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                         

Here's a fact: General Hux has had, since his original promotion to General, plans to eliminate all other major forces in the Order if necessary. Allies were just that, and Snoke even less so. There were members of the Order that believed that Snoke had the best interests of the Order at heart, but Hux was not one of them.

Here's another fact: despite all of his plans, he did not anticipate them being played out by the Resistance rather than his own army.

Nevertheless: the thought pleases him.

"The Knights are dispersed. Kylo Ren is on the Finalizer several sectors away. This is the best chance you're going to get."

Hux smirks (It's not really a smirk, Elan, but if that makes you feel better) and adds,

"May the Force be with you."

 

 

 

 

Elsewhere: Resistance troops armed with whatever force dampening armor they can find are amassing around Snoke's Citadel. Hux watches the reports on his Elusion line, listens to the chatter.

Here is a fact: he has very little direct control over this operation. He has given the resistance every chance, and yet there is so much that he cannot influence. He is not directing the attack, he will give no orders and leading no strategy.

Here are other facts: General Organa is the greatest strategist in the galaxy aside from himself. She has the Force and her brother, and all the information Hux could offer her.

Here:

General Hux’s comm blares to life. He answers it, and listens to a frantic officer: Kylo Ren is agitated in the docking bay, please send assistance.

Ah. Yes.

 

 

 

“I need a shuttle.” Ren’s voice is harsh, barely audible through the static of his vocoder even in the dead silent bay. The officer on duty is barely brave enough to sketch out a salute as Hux enters. “I need a shuttle and your fucking crew isn’t accepting my authorization-”

Here’s the thing: Hux is not surprised. He expected this. He has planned for this.

Here’s the other thing: his pulse is still racing, just a little, emotions he has no name for swirling in the bottom of his stomach (it’s called grief, Elan, it’s called regret, it’s called “what if” and “if only”.)

“Did you sign the forms?” Hux looks down at his datapad, as if checking for the documentation. “I informed you, after the thief of the Tie Fighter all flights would have to be authorized through the computer systems.” He glances up, sighs as if annoyed.

Here’s the truth: he’s stalling.

Ren’s breath is snarling, the vocoder spitting out static. “Forms? You expect me to waste my time with /paperwork?/”

 “Ren.” Hux gestures to the Silencer, his smile tight and obviously fake. “Shall we discuss this somewhere a little more private?” A common request, nothing suspicious about it. Hux has never approved of bickering in front of the troopers and Ren knows it.

Hux walks into the ship, letting out a breath at the heavy stomps of Ren following him.  The door of the shuttle slides shut behind them, and Hux spins on his heel to face him. 

”Take that thing off of your face,” Hux snarls as an opening. A common order, and one Ren often ignores. But today Ren tugs the mask off of his face and holds it in one hand. His overly expressive face is twisted with rage and something dangerously near desperation. “You can’t just ignore the rules when you don’t like them, Ren.”

“The Supreme Leader is calling for me!” Ren snarls back, using his scant height advantage to loom over Hux. His rage is a palpable thing, raising the hairs on Hux’s neck.

“Well, he certainly didn’t inform me of any alterations to procedures, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to go through the proper channels for once.”

Ren raises a hand, and Hux feels the air around his throat thicken. Then –

-Ren stumbles, the choke hold disappearing, his hand flying up to his the side of his head like he has a sudden headache –

This is expected. This is planned for. This is acceptable.

Here’s a secret: this is not okay.

Hux swallows down the glut of concern. “Ren, what are you-“ It is unlikely that Ren will hear him, but is important to maintain the façade for now –

Ren leans against the side of the cockpit. His eyes go glassy and blank and the helmet falls to the floor with a clang.  He is shaking, feverish, his mind splintering and barely held together. Most likely, he will remember nothing of these moments.

(But that’s okay, Elan. You’ll remember, and that’s enough.)

Hux cannot stay. Not for long. He must send Ren off into the abyss alone. He cannot stay.

But he can do this.

This is what he does: He helps Ren down onto the cot in the back of the ship as gently as he knows how, and brushes hair already damp with sweat out of Ren’s glazed eyes.

This is what he does: he pulls off his gloves, reaches forward, and takes Ren’s hand in both of his.

(it is always these moments that doom you, in the end, no matter what life it is - it is always the sight of Kylo Ren, the living storm, helpless and confused and vulnerable and /so damn young/ -

-it is the sight of Kylo Ren bleeding out in the snow, fingers dug into his own side, until he sees you and stares up like he can’t believe he’s not alone -

-it is always now, always here, that you know that there is no way to uproot whatever weed has taken root inside of you.)

“….h-hux?” Ren mutters, and does not pull his hand away.

“I cannot stay,” Hux says, instead of explaining, instead of damning himself with promises he cannot keep. “I cannot stay. I,” Hux huffs, looks away, rueful. “I am - sorry.”

For a long moment, he stays, thing about all the things they might have been, all of the almosts that stood between them. He cannot stay, and yet, and yet.

(It still hurts, Elan. It still hurts and it’s going to hurt. I’m sorry, but this is the price you have to pay – if you feel things you’re going to have to feel them. Caring only when it’s pleasant is as bad as not caring at all.

Swallow the pain and keep it close, cherish the memory of it, water the weed inside of you until its roots wrap around your bones. Carve it into your skin:  Here and now you felt another’s pain and ached to heal it. That’s enough, Elan; that’s /everything/.)

Hux’s comm for Elusion starts to buzz.

Hux closes his eyes, and then opens them again. He presses his lips against Ren’s trapped hand, once, then lets go. He stands, and enters the cockpit.  This must be done.

Here’s the truth, though: it’s still difficult to close that door and leave him alone.

Hux takes another breath, and thumbs on his comm and the vocoder.  

“Yes?”

“Heya – oh, shit, confirm code…  4799 dash 973 dash, fuck, 6011.” Hux snorts. Dameron. Of course. Here’s the truth: he’s long stop asking why things work out this way.

“Understood.  Confirm code: 8712 dash 000 dash 7450.”

“And we’re good! We’re ready for pick up if you are. Co-ordinates still the same?”

“Yes. His ship will be operated by autopilot. It will emerge from hyperspace in approximately thirty minutes, and carries a tracker. Transmitting the signal now.”

 “And received! Gotta say, there’s one hell of a betting pool about who you are. Wanna give me any insider tips?” Hux raises an eyebrow and says nothing. “Hey, it was worth a shot!”

“Did you bring the medical supplies I suggested?” Hux says instead.

“Yeah, plus.”

“Good. I have left all of the information I have on his situation on the datapad near the cot. His force ability is weakened, but I do not know if it will remain so.” Hux swallows down any emotions.  “I do not know how long he will remain stable.”

“Understood.” Dameron is suddenly sober and serious.  “We’ll take care of him.”

This is as much as he can do.  “Good. Confirm upon pick up. Elusion out.”

He thumbs off the comm, walks out of the ship. He activates the remote control on his data pad, and looks over to the crew.

“Prepare for launch,” he sneers, making himself sound annoyed and resigned. As if this were merely a normal argument with Ren where Ren got his way, yet again. As if Ren were standing at the controls, hale and healthy. As if everything were normal.

Here’s the truth: he’s a much better actor than he used to be.

 

 

 

A message, received thirty-seven tense minutes later on his Elusion line: “Pick up confirm. He’s out of it, but stable.”

Hux breathes out, once, and responds: “Thank you.”

 

 

 

 

The admirals have chosen to abandon Starkiller. Some of them, old enemies of his father, are smug enough about being able to abandon Hux’s pet project that they don’t bother to look too closely at the data. They likely made their choice not on what was best for the Order, but rather for the sake of seeing Hux fall.

Here’s a thought: Once, Hux thinks, he would be offended by that.

As a result, however: Starkiller is currently running a skeleton crew of maintenance techs.

Here’s fact:  they are currently in the process of leaving, believing that their replacements will arrive on the next transport.

Therefore: within an hour, Starkiller will be completely uninhabited. This should not be possible; the scheduling should overlap so that there is never any moment that it is empty.

Here’s the secret: Hux adjusted the schedules in order to produce this window of opportunity.

Here’s an observation: he’s getting sloppy. Such manipulation is much more direct and traceable than much of what he’s done as Elusion. Soon it won’t matter, but that’s no excuse.

Here’s a fact: Hux remembers exactly how large the blast was when Starkiller exploded. He remembers the burn of ozone, the after image carved into his vision, the ships lost and the casualties mounting.

Here’s a difference: Starkiller is now incomplete, its gaping stomach empty of any star. The end will not be as dramatic, will not kill half of his fleet as they flee for their lives.

Things are different now.  If this works correctly, there will hardly be an explosion at all.

Nevertheless, Hux has ordered his fleet outside of the blast range, citing a lack of manpower. He waits as the ships leave range, and then stands at the view port and stares down at his weapon.

(Here is what you think about: you think about long hours spent designing it, all the time and energy you poured into making it the most deadly thing the galaxy had ever seen. You think about standing on the platform and feeling like you could rip the galaxy apart, feeling like you were emperor of all. You think about watching it die and feeling like your beating heart was burning alive.

Here’s what you think about: you think about Kaja, offering aid to a stranger as her death crept closer unaware. You think about Kai, angry and then resigned as they watched the screen. You think about Nova, quietly sitting next to you in the snow.

You think: It won’t be a supernova this time, I’m afraid.

Here’s the secret: the thought makes you smile, a little bit.)

Hux presses a sequence of buttons on his data pad, and watches through his view port as the artificial gravity generators overload and shatter the internal support structures of the planet.

He takes in a breath, ignores the alarmed messages he’s getting through his Order comm for a second, and lets it out again. In the viewport, explosions and earthquakes rock the surface as the planet begins to collapse.

Here’s a thought: this, then, will be the Order’s funeral pyre. 

 

 

 

 

(Here’s a fact: there is a part of you that still expects to be struck down now. There is a part of you that remembers dying with Starkiller, burning alive and bleeding to death over and over, never more than a few days after the fall of the weapon. Even that first, longest time, this was the beginning of the end, the mortal blow that never healed.   

Here’s a memory, faint and almost fond: Ren rambling about an ancient dark lord who had pulled his beating heart out of his chest and stored it a box so that he could not be harmed. You’d taken great pleasure in explaining how that wouldn’t work no matter what biological arrangement the lord had, until Ren had thrown up his hands, shouting that it was a metaphor. It was about becoming pure, he’d said, about removing the things that made you weak and the things that made you mortal until you were power and nothing else.

Here’s a secret: did you know the Resistance called you General Starkiller, after the firing? Did you know that you would become one with your weapon, indistinguishable in the annals of history? Wasn’t that what you /wanted/, to burn away everything in you that had ever been a person?

Here’s the truth, Elan: your heart is not welded to your weapon any longer. But do you know where it is instead?)

 

 

 

The Resistance draws ever nearer, bolstered by the cascade of rebelling planets and defecting Stormtroopers. High Command has sequestered themselves off in one of the last hidden strongholds, but no matter – Elusion has already transmitted the coordinates. They will fall within the week.

The Finalizer is the last line of defense. If it falls, the Order falls with it. They have been given orders: no surrender, no retreat.

Here’s a fact: there are enough Resistance sympathizers on the Finalizer in high enough ranks that given the option, the ship would likely go down without a fight. Hux has quietly transferred the officers he knows to be more willing to go down fighting to other positions. The Finalizer was built for war, but he watched his ship limp to its death once, and has no desire to see it again.

Not that he will watch either case, of course.

Elusion’s comm receives a ping – the Resistance confirming their plan of attack on the Finalizer.

Hux sends an acknowledgement, and then shuts off the comm. He seals himself in his office, kills all of the cameras, sets his data to self-destruct, and pulls out his blaster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

t=+1

Here’s what could happen:

General Hux is found dead in his office in an apparent suicide. All of his data, personal or professional, is destroyed beyond retrieval, and it is presumed that he intended to avoid the shame of capture by the resistance.

The Order falls rapidly. The Resistance, the internal rebellions, the collapse of the Stormtrooper program, the death of its star general – the Order could survive one of them, perhaps, but not all of them, and the final death throes are not gentle but they are at least quick. 

In the aftermath and clean up, one name emerges as a key figure in the collapse: Elusion. A spy, a revolutionary, a traitor – and a mystery. They covered the tracks well, and are only known through their works – funding to one revolutionary movement or another, patrol patterns leaked to the Resistance. Different possibilities for their identity are argued over the following decades, but no one can ever prove anything.

General Hux is largely forgotten by history. Just another Order general, only notable for being one of the last and the things he almost achieved. He is used in counterfactuals, exploring what might have happened if Starkiller had become operational – occasionally, he shows up in historical holofilms as the villain, usually against the Heroic Elusion.

The galaxy heals -at least some of it- and recovers -at least some of the way - and continues to spin.

 

 

 

(What is the purpose of punishment? Why do we bother? Is it an excuse for bloodlust? A warning to others? An attempt to heal the unhealable?)

(Well, yes, except-)

(The lesson is this: empathy.)

(The lesson is this: this is what you have done, this is what you inflicted on another, this is what you took from them. The lesson is this: feel what you have made another feel, understand it as fully as you have forced them to understand. Know the magnitude of what you have done and do not look away.)

                                                                                                                                                 

 

 

Here’s what happens instead:

General Hux kills all the cameras in his office, and sets his personal and professional data to self-destruct. He pulls out his personal blaster, primes it, and presses the muzzle under his jaw. He puts his finger to the trigger –

-and hesitates.

For long moments the tableau remains, balanced on blaster-point. And then –

 

(This is the lesson: be better and do not stop.)

 

General Armitage Elan Hux lets out a breath, sets the blaster down on his desk, and waits for the Resistance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6 tags: administrative maneuvering, ethical dilemmas, hux is bad at having emotions, this is not a romance, Ren-related angst, Emotionally Significant Hand Holding
> 
> atl title: Baby’s first Ethics Test
> 
>  
> 
> ......i can't believe I'm finishing this. thanks so much for reading, I love you all <33
> 
> (and yes, I am writing an epilogue!)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Rewind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13274301) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)




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